Tunisia has had eight governments in as many years. Current bickering among the members of the present ruling coalition make it seem very likely that it will shortly have a ninth. The depressing reality is that yet another coalition is going to make precious little difference to the country’s social and economic woes.

While Tunis itself and its plush outside suburbs, such as La Marsa and Hammamet, show a relatively prosperous face to the world, out into the countryside it is easy to find widespread unemployment, poverty and discontent. While the overall jobless rate is 15 percent, around 30 percent of young people, including those with a university education, cannot find work.

It has always been one of the oddities of the analysis of terrorism that Tunisians made up the largest national contribution to the bigoted killers of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS). Why should this country which enjoyed modest wealth from tourism, agriculture, mineral extraction, manufacturing industries and extensive remittances from Tunisians working abroad, mostly in neighboring Libya, have also been an important source of terrorist recruits?

Part of the answer lies in the corruption of the Ben Ali regime that was toppled in 2011 in the first outbreak of the so-called “Arab Spring”. In complete contrast to Tunisia’s first republican leader Habib Bourguiba, who was notable for his modest living and measured conduct, Ben Ali and his coterie enriched themselves by seizing the dominant peaks of the economy. They kept power through the deployment of a sizable secret police force, who were not really so secret at all since they generally affected dark glasses and black leather jackets. Even though these security forces are now more benign, the glowering presence of one of them in black leather and shades can still send a shiver through an ordinary Tunisian.

During Ben Ali’s rule, there were already anti-regime insurgents operating in the south and east of the country, especially along the border with Libya. Though the regime called them terrorists, they were largely based on families spread across into Libya who enjoyed a good income from cross-border smuggling. But the general disaffection with the regime and the anger of the smugglers as the authorities sought to cash in on or close down their activities brought a steady trickle of angry young people from elsewhere in the country. Islamist radicals were not slow to spot the recruiting opportunities. Their campaign to bring in young dupes then spread back to the dirt-poor communities from which these youths had come.

It was terror attacks conducted by Tunisian members of Daesh, most notably at the magnificent Bardo museum in Tunis and the slaughter of foreign holidaymakers at Sousse, which almost overnight destroyed the country’s tourism trade. Not only was a key source of foreign currency cut off, but also tens of thousands of people who worked in the tourism sector and many thousands more who depended on tourist spending were thrown out of work.

The tourists are coming back slowly but it will take more than their dollars and euros to fix a now tottering economy. Tunisians are desperate at the failure of their revolution, from which they expected so much. It is time some real political vision kicked in. The country needs calm stability, not demonstrations promoted by political rivals. Put bluntly, Tunisians deserve better than their squabbling politicians.