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Tunisia Between Democratization and Institutionalizing Uncertainty

  • Kevin Koehler
  • Jana Warkotsch
Chapter
Part of the Elections, Voting, Technology book series (EVT)

Abstract

The Tunisian Revolution not only led to the fall of one of the region’s most entrenched dictators, but it also made Tunisia stand out among the countries of the Arab Spring as the country in which the taming of political dynamics by way of electoral processes has progressed furthest. While in Egypt extra-institutional forms of contention are commonplace and Libya and Yemen are plagued by intermittent fighting, in Tunisia the transitional process proceeded more orderly. The October 2011 elections have produced a National Constituent Assembly (al-Majlis al-Ta»sīsī al-Waṭanī, NCA) that by and large worked within a framework of preestablished rules. No major political force has contested the legitimacy of this assembly, and a constitutional draft has been presented to the public in late 2012. While political conflict is by no means absent from the Tunisian political scene, the degree to which elite contestation is carried out via institutional channels is what sets Tunisia apart from other countries.1

Keywords

Vote Share Electoral Process Electoral Competition Electoral Politics Opposition Parti 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

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© Mahmoud Hamad and Khalil al-Anani 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Kevin Koehler
  • Jana Warkotsch

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