When Tunisia initiated pro-democracy mass mobilization in late 2010, few thought it would reverberate to the rest of the region with such dramatic consequences. And when some of these countries fell back into autocracy (Egypt from mid-2013) and others into spirals of violence and internationalized civil wars (Libya, Syria), most thought Tunisia remained the only hope for a peaceful democratization regional story, which could have, down the line, still influenced other countries sharing its language, religion, and most of its cultural and historical referents.
The devil is in the detail, however, and the consensus-driven nature of the post-2011 transition between Islamist and non-Islamist forces, which led to paralysis and lack of deep reforms, represented the Achilles heel of the sustainability of the post-revolutionary system and of the legitimacy not only of the partially new political class but of political institutions per se.
Much has been written on the inclusive nature of Ennahda’s governance style, especially when confronted with similar forces in the region, such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, on the 2014 democratic Constitution, or the involvement of civil society in broader political processes. Too late analysis turned on the lack of economic reforms and progress in socio-economic rights by all post-revolutionary elites, whose main shared common trait, especially between Ennahda and Nida Tounes, was represented by a pro-status quo neoliberal approach. This enabled them to avoid major frictions over wealth redistribution, labor reforms, privatizations, but it also prevented them from initiating a series of much-needed reforms addressing the country’s chronic economic underperformance, the fight against corruption, curbing public debt and shifting public expenditures from consumption to investments.
Following Theda Skocpol’s insights on the essence of revolutions, one could argue that even post-2011 Tunisia, the only democratic experiment lasting over a decade in the Arab world, was never a revolutionary outcome but merely elites’ reconfiguration. The lack of substantial reforms was shared by most post-revolutionary trajectories in the region, with the exception of Morocco: competition, innovation, structural diversification of the economy, as well as service delivery were not promoted, and, as a consequence, in the decade 2011-2021, there were limited improvements in well-being for large parts of the region’s population.
In Tunisia, the economic downturn accompanied the increasing political paralysis undergoing during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially in 2021, a crisis that was particularly severe in the country in terms of infections and mortality, almost a collapse of the health system, and a food crisis. While often neglected, the consequences of the pandemic in exacerbating pre-existing vulnerabilities in the country have been particularly visible in the prolonged and recurrent food shortages for basic commodities. In particular, given the limited foreign currency at its disposal, the government has limited food imports for which the state has a monopoly, at a time of poor harvests in 2022 and 2023.
This governance failure was multifaceted: it was a health crisis that was not addressed, neither financially nor at the level of supporting the already thinly stretched category of public doctors; it was a deteriorating economic situation with losses in tourism revenues, and it was, overall, poorly managed and with confused communication.
This dealt a final blow to the already declining public trust of citizens in post-2011 political institutions and enabled President Kais Saied‘s power grab in 2021, the unconstitutional dissolution of the democratically elected parliament, and the process of presidentialization through the weakening of checks and balances, coercion vis-à-vis opponents, and the securitization of public space.
It goes without saying that since 2021, Saied’s self-coup, the procrastination tactics have continued, accompanied by conspiratorial accusations of enemies of the state either trying to impose draconian measures, as in the case of the IMF loan, stalled since 2023, or of domestic corrupt cronies hoarding food commodities or profiting from other rents to the disadvantage of the poorer classes. His managing style weaponizes hate against some social categories (post-revolutionary politicians, either arrested or in exile, but also African migrants) and carries out various crackdowns. Expanding the remit of the suspension of associations’ activities, the presidency has increased its pressure on activists (as allowed by Decree-Law no.88). Under the pretext of “false information”, as foreseen by Decree-Law no. 54 of 2022, it has initiated wide-ranging campaigns of arrests of journalists. The country’s drop to 137th out of 180 countries in terms of freedom comes as no surprise (Reporters Without Borders 2026). The intent of trying to take down the post-2011 political ecosystem, including media and associations beyond the political class, is barely dissimulated.
By so doing, he has managed to increase social and political polarization and further convince significant sectors of public opinion that liberal democracy has no useful answers to the country’s multidimensional vulnerabilities and that he steers the ship as best as possible. After so many cycles of hopes and disillusionment, Tunisians seem increasingly prone to attempt to migrate rather than protest, as argued elsewhere.
The historic low trust for democratic institutions and politicians, especially among the youth, is one of the key factors continuing to enable the system dominance by Kais Saied: if in 2012-14, 66 percent of Tunisians expressed support for liberal democracy, one decade later, this percentage is down by 28 percent, while, in parallel, the support for a system governed by a strong authority gained increasing popularity during the same period: in Tunisia it was supported by 9 percent in 2012-2014 and by 36 percent a decade later.
Saied’s “wait and see” approach characterizes his leadership style in most challenging matters, ranging beyond the food crisis, and including reversing the economic downturn, but also addressing labor protests by precarious teachers or heeding environmental protests.
From 2016 onwards, the country has been shaken by contentious politics—waves of protests, sit-ins and strikes in the peripheral interior regions against unemployment, corruption and austerity—with the number of protests more than doubling between 2015 and 2019.
In the past few months, environmental and health protests have mounted in Gabes, following leaks of asphyxiating gases from the Tunisian chemical complex, causing a series of suffocation incidents among students at Chott Assalam middle school. This reignited a wave of mobilization from October 2025, when a march saw the participation of over 130,000 citizens. Residents were demonstrating against the Tunisian Chemical Group, which has been polluting the area for decades. Mobilizations started already in 2012, and far from being tied merely to ecological demands, they referred to the right to a decent life and started to organize for a long-term struggle.
Interestingly, these grassroot activities identified head-on the exploitative and exactivist nature of these industrial efforts, which far from generating wealth for local communities or jobs, caused negative externalities under the guise of polluted terrain and health risks, in the absence of state regulations, or facing delayed state decisions (such as the decision to dismantle the Chemical Group’s polluting unit back in 2017 that was not followed suit). Under Saied, other promised measures, such as the creation of a dedicated commission, failed to be implemented. Gabes, as the Gafsa mining district, suffers from decades-long dis-investment and concentration of low added value and potentially polluting or hazardous industrial plans, while the coastal areas were the ones privileged already under Bourguiba and later by Ben Ali, producing and reproducing wealth and health inequalities.
Kais Saied’s slogan “The people want” has been reused against him in the Gabes context, trying to elicit some decisive action from the government, but to no avail, despite self-accusations by the chemical group of “serious non-compliance” in the emissions of toxic gases, the handling of used industrial water and the flow of pollution into the sea.
Unwilling to tackle the free-riding behavior of the chemical group, the government under Kais Saied’s leadership has tried to silence the protests, securitized the issue, and weaponized the judiciary against environmental activists.
To this day, environmental violations continue in the governorate of Gabès, where environmental violence is compounded by institutional violence and inadequate health services. So far, most protests blame the government and fail to identify Kais Saied as the politician in charge. Far from granting activists leeway or protection from repression and arrests, this plays into the hands of the President, who gets away, once again, with his 2wait and see” approach.
Cover photo: A general view of the state-run phosphate processing plant (fertiliser factory) in the southern city of Gabes on October 31, 2025 (Photo by Fethi Belaid / AFP)
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