The Last Democracy of the Arab Spring

“In democracies, there’s always the vulnerability to a slide toward populism—and for leaders who are democratically elected to start turning away from democracy.” The Fall What’s happening to the Arab Spring’s last democracy? Michele Dunne on the upheaval in Tunisia. As the attempt to build democracy in Afghanistan has crumbled, the case of Tunisia, 3,300 miles to the west in North Africa, has been an encouraging counterpoint. But the transition to democracy there is now facing its biggest challenge yet. After the Arab Spring revolutions of 2010-11, Tunisia emerged as the only representative democracy in the Arab world. As a military coup in Egypt in 2013 restored autocratic rule, and Yemen and Libya fell into ongoing civil wars, Tunisian civil-society groups won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for leading the negotiations that produced a democratic constitution and free, fair elections. That political system was upended on July 25, however, when President Kais Saied [fired the prime minister]( [suspended Parliament]( [imposed a nationwide curfew]( and declared a state of emergency for 30 days—and then, on Aug. 23, [extended]( it indefinitely. Saied says that he’s responding to protests demanding the government resign for its failures to manage the pandemic, lower a persistently high unemployment rate, and address endemic corruption. Many Tunisians have welcomed Saied’s moves to dismiss a thoroughly unpopular government, but his critics say that he’s a populist demagogue undertaking a coup against the democratic system. Is the Arab Spring’s lone success story collapsing? Michele Dunne is the director of the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who served as a Middle East specialist at the U.S. State Department from 1986 until 2003. As Dunne sees it, Saied’s seizure of power could mean the end of the democratic transition in Tunisia, as well as of the political freedoms and civil rights that revolutionaries of the Arab Spring fought for. Tunisia’s struggles to create a democracy, Dunne says, reflect the problems that scuttled the other Arab Spring transitions: regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. acted swiftly to undermine democratization, while the United States and other established democracies gave little help. In Dunne’s view, Tunisia, other Arab states, and even Afghanistan offer important lessons for the United States and its allies in how to promote the spread of democracy in the world. ——— Michael Bluhm: Is Tunisian democracy in danger? Michele Dunne: We don’t know whether the steps that President Saied took have ended the democratic transition in Tunisia. Tunisia has been through other major challenges to its transition, and each time Tunisians have backed away and kept the democratic transition going. That’s still possible. But this is the biggest challenge so far, and things are looking pretty dark. President Saied correctly diagnosed that the political system in Tunisia wasn’t working. The question is whether these steps are the right way to address that problem. The Tunisian government—and the democratic transition in Tunisia—may have been one of the victims of COVID. The COVID crisis pushed what was an unhappy, ongoing political situation in Tunisia over the edge. People became extremely impatient with poor governance and the inability of the political system to address the COVID crisis. The COVID crisis came on top of an ongoing economic crisis. One of the big failures of the transition has been for Tunisians to come together around an economic vision that would go along with the political vision that they agreed to in their constitution. The economy in Tunisia has limped along for years. With tourism taking a major hit because of the pandemic, the bottom has fallen out of the economy. A couple of things about the political system and transition have made it vulnerable to failure. First, they never completed constructing the political system. They never got to institute a Constitutional Court. That’s important right now, because there’s no court to rule whether what President Saied did was constitutional. The bureaucracy has not been reformed, so corruption and poor performance have continued. At the same time, they had quite an inspiring constitution and a big expansion in personal liberties and freedoms of expression and association. More from Michele Dunne at The Signal: “What’s at stake here are the hard-won political gains of the last 10 years: the increases in freedom of expression and association, individual rights, and the Tunisian constitution. Because of a failure to reform governance, continuing corruption, and poor economic performance, all their political gains—of which Tunisians have been justly proud—are at stake now. We don’t know for sure that they will be lost, but they could be. All of that is on the table. The model of Tunisia as the lone Arab democracy is at stake.” “Democracy is just a way of getting things done. What people ultimately want is the goods. They want economic prosperity, rule of law, security, individual freedoms. To construct a system that will deliver those goods to the population is really difficult, and it requires time. In the Arab countries, they just didn’t have the time. In Egypt, the whole thing—from bringing down Mubarak to a military coup—was slightly over two years. It’s just not possible to build a democratic system in that short a time.” “International players should be thinking, When there is an opportunity for a democratic transition, what can we do to help the people inside the country have the time and space to work things out among themselves, to come up with their own vision, and begin to construct that? Things went so quickly in the Arab countries, and then external players who wanted to end the democratic transitions or prevent them acted quickly and decisively, militarily and financially.” ——— Altered States How would it change life in the United States if its Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade? Mary Ziegler on the prospect of an America with drastically restricted abortion rights. (Originally published 2021 | 05.21) “This is not a drill.” That’s how one prominent abortion-rights group [described]( the United States Supreme Court’s decision in May to hear a case directly challenging Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling guaranteeing a nationwide right to abortion. The Court will likely hear arguments this fall, with the anti-abortion movement poised for a historic victory—made possible by former President Donald Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. So, what would America be like without Roe? Mary Ziegler, a professor at the Florida State University College of Law, is the author of three books on the history of U.S. abortion law and politics. According to Ziegler, roughly half the states in the country would outlaw abortion if Roe were overturned. Illegal abortions would increase, and more people would travel across state lines for access to the procedure—a more difficult proposition for those with fewer resources. Meanwhile, states committed to abortion rights might look for ways to solidify them and expand access—including to people from states where abortion were outlawed. While the future of abortion rights in America remains uncertain, Ziegler says, the issue wouldn’t end with Roe. If anything, the issue would only become more politically salient. “The abortion wars would get even uglier.” ——— ——— [The Signal]( is a new, independent digital publication exploring vital questions in democratic life and the human world—and sustained entirely by readers like you. To support The Signal and for full access: We recently resolved a broken-link issue with our opt-out function. If you’ve received this in error, our apologies—you can immediately unsubscribe below. Thank you. © 2021 The Signal The Signal | 717 N St. NW, Ste. One, Washington, DC 20011 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}]( [Constant Contact Data Notice]( Sent by newsletters@thesgnl.email