Toward a ‘Democracy with Democrats’ in Tunisia

Abstract

Chapter 1 is explicitly anchored in democratic transition theory, while introducing a dimension that democratic transition theory had never much considered: religion. By contrasting Tunisia with Egypt, Stepan seeks to explain why a democratic transition happened in the former. His argument is twofold: one pre-condition, he believes, was the rapprochement between the leading Islamist party Ennahda and secular forces on a democratic platform in the years leading to the 2011 revolution, which created the ground for a sustainable cross-ideological coalition. But this outcome was above all made possible, at a moment in 2013 when the institutional process was on the verge of collapse, by the personal commitment and leadership of the heads of the Islamist and secular blocks, leading to what Stepan calls a ‘two sheikhs’ compromise.