Tunisia's Evolutionary Revolution

This article, co-written with Rasmus Boserup, appeared on CNN.com

Ten months after the collapse of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime, Tunisia has produced a remarkable balancing act between the revolutionary urge for change and a pragmatic need for continuity. With elections for a constitutional assembly due to take place on October 23, the country that ignited the “Arab Awakening” is emerging as a regional paradigm for a stable democratic transition.

A number of preconditions have smoothed Tunisia’s path. Whereas Egypt struggles with the need to assert civilian control over the military, the Tunisian army has stayed out of politics. And, in contrast to Libya, the Tunisian population never took up arms during the protests. The economy does not run on hydrocarbons. And, notwithstanding serious inequalities between Tunisia’s littoral and inland areas, this small country of 10 million people is, according to the World Bank, an upper-middle-income economy.

Above all, civil institutions have proven to be resilient. A “Higher Council,” made up of notables of different backgrounds and political orientations, has been established to steer the transition. For all of the previous regime’s misdeeds, Tunisians are proud of their country’s liberal institutions, such as women’s rights and a progressive family code, adopted in 1956. Betraying some nostalgia, senior members of the administration speak privately of a “remarkable continuity” in the Tunisian transition.

But overall stability has not prevented cracks from emerging in more contentious areas. The security sector remains largely unreformed. The rough, transitional justice that often follows a change of regime has not taken place, at least not yet. In what is arguably the most striking change since the fall of Ben Ali, Tunisia has witnessed the swift rise of an Islamist movement that was banned from the country for decades.

The ascent of Nahda (Renaissance), the leading Islamist party, is less a reflection of latent ideological support among a newly liberated people than it is a testament to the party’s remarkable ability to fill the post-revolutionary political vacuum. Since January, Nahda has opened more than 200 offices. Scores of volunteers are deployed in electoral campaigning at a grassroots, door-to-door level. The party’s imposing headquarters in the suburbs of Tunis symbolize its position as the most effective political operation in the country by far.

While opponents ominously recall the involvement of party cadres in the deadly bombings of tourist targets in 1991, Nahda has gone to some lengths to appease its critics. Its electoral program calls for constitutionalism, separation of powers, citizenship-based rights, and the protection of women’s rights. Adherence to such tenets would place Nahda in the same league of moderate Islamist parties as the Turkey’s Justice and Development Party and its Moroccan counterpart.

Much like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Nahda will have to marginalize the more militant fringes of Islamist politics, such as the salafis – and is likely to lose some of its supporters in the process. But Nahda’s ambition to win over – and, ultimately, stably occupy – the mainstream of Tunisia’s democratic politics requires nothing less.

There is no silver bullet to democratization. In Algeria in 1991, it was civil-society activists who called for a military intervention against the Islamists; in Tunisia in 2011, all political actors seem to accept that the Islamists’ democratic credentials must be tested through elections, and that the outcome must be respected. If Islamists are to be brought into the democratic fold and encouraged to move towards the political mainstream by getting their hands dirty in the give-and-take of day-to-day politics, then Tunisia may be the right place to try it.

Moreover, if there is such a thing as a Tunisian “model” of democratic revolution, its distinctiveness consists in its evolutionary character: the state administration has continued to function, and a cross-party consensus has emerged around basic social and economic policies. The middle class has taken charge, while a long-repressed Islamist contender has entered the fray of electoral politics.

Once a corrupt regime is removed, the road ahead often proves bumpy, as has been true in all of the countries affected by the Arab Awakening. But in Tunisia, what has also emerged is a lively nascent democracy that deserves the West’s support.

Tunisia: wasn't this what we were hoping for?

This article, co-written with Rasmus Boserup, appeared on openDemocracy

John Maynard Keynes once wrote that: “It is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transition”. The people of Tunisia have been doggedly focused on their quest for a better 'state of affairs' since January, when they ousted the regime of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. As elections for a constitutional assembly take place on 23 October, Tunisia’s institutions, parties and society have proven keenly aware of the 'evils of transition'. The result is a remarkable balancing act between the revolutionary urge for change and a pragmatic need for continuity.

The nation that ushered in this year’s 'Arab Spring' has experienced a process that distinguishes itself markedly from its Egyptian and Libyan neighbours. Whereas Egypt struggles with finding an adequate role for the military, the Tunisian army has kept out of politics. In contrast to Libya, the Tunisian population never took up arms during the protests. While facing a number of serious challenges, including how to include the country’s re-emerging Islamist contenders, westerners can be forgiven for hoping that Tunisia will represent a much longed-for role model of a stable and peaceful transition.

Remarkable continuity
Is there a silver bullet to democratization? The experience of this corner on the northern tip of Africa is that a smooth transition process requires a number of preconditions. Unusual for the regional context, Tunisia does not run on hydrocarbons. Notwithstanding serious inequalities between the littoral areas and the inland, this country of 10 million inhabitants is relatively wealthy and qualifies, according to the World Bank, as an upper-middle-income economy.

Above all, civil institutions have proven to be resilient: The Higher Council for the Achievements of the Goals of the Revolution, a transitional representative body made up of notables of different backgrounds and political orientation, has steered the transitional process. One of the Council’s key achievements is arguably the compromise on Tunisia’s constitutional system, which will shift from presidential to prime ministerial in order to limit concentration of power in the executive branch. Betraying nostalgia for Tunisia’s regime of Habib Bourguiba (1956-1987), senior members of the administration speak openly of “remarkable continuity” in the Tunisian transition.

Behind this resilience of the state is a culture of moderation and pragmatism that is frequently presented as a uniquely Tunisian quality. Even for those social and political forces calling for a radical break with the past, 'change' often amounts to wiping out the corruption that was endemic amongst the high echelons of Ben Ali’s clan. Other than that, there is a broad consensus on the economic and social challenges facing the nation. Unemployment and disparities among the country’s different regions require a degree of redistribution. Yet, as a small and resource-poor country, Tunisia has thrived on trade and openness, which does not require the visible, intrusive hand of the state. In an echo of continental Europe’s welfare model, political operators, including those of an Islamist persuasion, speak of Tunisia as a 'social market economy'.

Dignity and disruption
For all the flowers sold as souvenirs on Avenue Bourguiba, Tunis’ central thoroughfare, nobody in Tunisia speaks of a Jasmine Revolution, as the western press have dubbed it. Tunisians rather savour the reach and depth of social mobilization around the fundamental quest for social justice. The first real indignados of 2011 were not those who hit the streets of Madrid and Athens, but those who ousted Ben Ali’s calcified autocracy. Its political forces have maintained a remarkably united front. Tunisia’s was above all a 'revolution of dignity'.

This consensus, however, has not prevented cracks from emerging in other, more contentious areas of governance. The transition surrounding security and justice is a case in point. While the army has played no role in the transition (itself another unusual feature of the Tunisian revolution) the security sector remains largely unreformed. Transitional justice that follows a regime change, of the kind experienced in Central Europe or South Africa, has simply not taken place in Tunisia. Another issue that caused disruption, and eventually a deadlock in the transitional Higher Council, was the proposal to regulate party financing, with leading parties refusing to disclose their resources.

For all the misdeeds of the previous regimes, Tunisians are proud of their liberal institutions: freedom of women and a progressive family code, adopted in 1956. Yet, in the run-up to the elections, the debate concerning morals has become particularly heated. Senior members of Nahda, the leading Islamist party, are accused of being ambiguous on the matter of polygamy. Some secular politicians are being singled out for their alleged consumption of alcohol. The growing attrition around the discourse on values underscores what is arguably the most complex challenge facing the fledgling Tunisian democracy.

Islamist renaissance
The most obvious disruptive element in the Tunisian transition concerns the role played by the quickly expanding, but young and unknown, Islamist movement. Weakened by decades of intense state repression orchestrated by Ben Ali’s notorious Ministry of Interior, Tunisia’s Islamists were largely spectators at the toppling of the president. Much has changed since then: after the return of Rachid Ghannouchi, the historic leader of Hizb al-Nahda (or 'Renaissance Party'), after twenty years in exile, the Islamists have displayed a remarkable ability to rebuild their organization and affirm their presence in Tunisia’s political and social realm. Different independent polls point to an electoral outcome in October in which Ghannouchi’s party will dominate parliament with up to 25% of the votes cast, almost twice as many as its nearest contenders from the secular-leaning liberal and socialist parties.

The swift rise of Nahda is less the story of default ideological support by a newly liberated electorate, than it is one of remarkable ability to fill the post-revolutionary political vacuum. Since the fall of Ben Ali’s regime, Nahda has opened more than 200 offices in Tunisia. Scores of volunteers are deployed in electoral campaigning at a grassroots, door-to-door level. The party’s imposing headquarters in the suburbs of Tunis symbolises its position as the most effective political operation in the country.

Nahda has gone to some lengths to appease its critics. Opponents recall Ghannouchi’s celebratory speeches about the Iranian revolution in 1979 (from which he later distanced himself) and the involvement of some party cadres in the deadly bombings of tourist targets in 1991. But today Nahda’s electoral program spells constitutionalism, separation of powers, citizenship-based rights and the preservation of women’s rights. Such tenets arguably place Nahda in the same league as moderate Islamist counterparts such as the Moroccan Justice and Development Party and Turkey’s AK Party.

Will it last?
There is more to Nahda’s success than sheer organizational capacity and political wits. In the light of its uncompromising opposition to Ben Ali, for large segments of the Tunisian electorate the party also embodies the clearest and cleanest alternative to the survivors of the old regime. But what might be perceived as a strong advantage in the short run, could potentially turn into a serious challenge to the party’s long-term cohesion.

At present there seems to exist at least three sociological groups inside the Nahda. There are the political activists who, like Ghannouchi, fled the repression in the late 1980s and have just returned from exile. Then there are the tens of thousands of political prisoners who spent much of the past two decades in detention. Finally, there is a less homogeneous '1980s generation' whose members stayed silent in Tunisia during Ben Ali’s regime. It remains to be seen whether Nahda will be able to reconcile these different experiences and networks, or whether the party will split into several competing parties as has recently happened with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The recent ousting from Nahda of the respected Islamic thinker and co-founder of the party, Abdelfattah Mourou, underscored the relevance of such speculation.

Not unrelated is Nahda’s relation with the more radical and conservative elements of the Islamist movement. Much like the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, the party is under pressure from a small increasingly active Salafi movement, whose rise is generally attributed to the influence of Saudi Arabia’s satellite TV-preachers and labour migration. While lack of interest in electoral participation makes its political appeal limited for now, the Salafi tendency has been known to exist in Tunisia for a while, and its presence is being increasingly felt in public life. Locals recall gloomily an episode from July this year, when salafi activists physically prevented a cinema in central Tunis from screening “Neither Allah, Nor Master”, a documentary film that they had deemed 'immoral'.

Much like the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, Nahda will have to distance itself from the more radical fringes such as the salafis. In doing so, the party is likely to lose some of its supporters. But Nahda’s ambition to win over, and ultimately stably occupy the mainstream of Tunisia’s democratic politics, requires nothing less.

A great Tunisian evolution
Before this year’s Arab awakening, Islamists offering a strategic and ideological counterweight to secular autocracies proved to be a recipe for ruthless repression. Today, the tables have turned and it is rather Islamists who respond and reject the liberal-secular dogma. Ominously, a controversy over whether the full-faced veil can be worn in Tunisian universities led last weekend to violent clashes between salafis and the police.
But the fact that Nahda promptly condemned these and other recent protests sustains a broader point: if Islamist movements are to be brought into the democratic fold, encouraged to move towards the centre of the political spectrum, and get their hands dirty in the endless bargaining that is day-to-day politics, then Tunisia may be the right place to try it. In Algeria in 1991, several civil society activists called for a military intervention against the Islamists; in 2011 Tunisia, the political forces seem to accept that the Islamists’ democratic credentials must be tested through elections.

With a somewhat more daring leap of faith, the pragmatism characterizing the Tunisian transition can be taken a step further. Tunisians are surprisingly indulgent about the realpolitk behind the decades-long engagement of European governments with corrupted autocracies in the region; “we blame them,” a top operator told us, “but we understand them.” On the other hand, the transition so far is remarkably aligned with the objectives of longer-term, and lower-profile, policies that institutions such as the European Union have been carrying out for the past twenty years. In this sense, if there is such a thing as a Tunisian 'model', it lies in its evolutionary as much as its revolutionary character: the state administration has continued to run, the middle class has taken charge, and a cross-party consensus has emerged around basic social and economic policies - at the same time as a long repressed Islamist contender has entered the fray of democratic politics.

As for the other countries involved in the Arab awakening, once the top layers of a corrupt regime have been removed, the road ahead is nevertheless destined to be bumpy and uphill for some time to come. But in Tunisia, what has emerged is also a body politic that deserves the west’s unreserved support.