1. Seeing Tunisia’s Civil Society During Un-civil Times
- Author:
- Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh
- Publication Date:
- 03-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- Tunisia’s dramatic democratic reversals since July 2021 warrant an in-depth reflection on how and where its once-promising democratisation momentum went wrong. Much attention is given to the top-down demolition of democratic institutions by the country’s (democratically) elected President Kais Saied. However, just as the popular revolution that ousted the dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and the subsequent democratic transition was to a great extent a bottom-up process, so civil society too is an important piece of the de-democratisation puzzle. In a bid to compare and contrast trajectories of degeneration and regeneration, the paper explores the contributions and constraints of Tunisian civil society vis-à-vis Tunisia’s difficult experiment with democratisation.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Democratization, Democracy, Institutions, and NGOs
- Political Geography:
- North Africa and Tunisia