2023.13: The Collapse of Tunisia's Democracy

Professor Sharan Grewal

• Assistant Professor of Government, College of William and Mary

• Nonresident Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, The Brookings Institution

• Research Fellow, Middle East Initiative, Harvard University (2023-2024)

Professor Grewal's publications

• Full CV

• Soldiers of Democracy? Military Legacies and the Arab Spring, Oxford University Press, July 2023

• "Political, not Partisan: Tunisia's General Labor Union under Democracy," Comparative Politics, 54(3): 453-475, April 2022, with Dina Bishara

• "From Islamists to Muslim Democrats: The Case of Tunisia's Ennahda," American Political Science Review, 114(2): 519-535, May 2020

• "Tunisia's Foiled Coup of 1987: The November 8th Group," Middle East Journal, 74(1): 53-71, Spring 2020

• "Down and Out: Founding Elections and Disillusionment with Democracy in Egypt and Tunisia," Comparative Politics, 51(4): 497-539, July 2019, with Steve Monroe

Tunisia revolution timeline

• 2010: Arab Spring begins when a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire after being harassed by police

• January 14, 2011: President Ben Ali flees into exile in Saudi Arabia

• October 2011: Ennahda wins the most seats in a new parliament; forms coalition government with 2 secular parties

• February & July 2013: Two secular politicians assassinated by Islamic extremists

• December 2013: Ennahda cedes power to a technocratic government in compromise over a new constitution

• January 2014: Parliament approves new constitution, guaranteeing personal freedoms, and splitting power between a president and prime minister

• December 2014: Beji Caid Essebsi (Nidaa Tounes) wins first presidential election; Ennahda comes in second in parliamentary elections; unity government is formed with Nidaa Tounes, Ennahda, and two other parties

• March 2015: Islamic State attacked the Bardo Museum in Tunis, killing 20 tourists and a police officer

• October 2015: The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet of civil society groups are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in mediating a political solution to the constitutional impasse in 2013/2014

• November 2015: Suicide bombing kills 12 soldiers

• March 2016: Security forces repel attack by ISIS-affiliated group on the Libyan border in the southern Tunisian town of Ben Guerdane

• July 25, 2019: President Essebsi dies

• October 2019: Kais Saied elected president

• July 25, 2021: Kais Saied closes parliament and centers all power in himself

• July 25, 2022: New constitution passes with only 30% voter turnout, creating a hyper-presidential system

• December 2022/January 2023: Parliamentary elections draw 11% voter turnout

References to non-Tunisian politics

• AOC's shoes

• Gaddafi's Power to the People

  • Hajjar, Sami G. 1980. "The Jamahiriya Experiment in Libya: Qadhafi and Rousseau," The Journal of Modern African Studies, 18(2): 181-200

• Autogolpe (self-coup) in Peru (1992)