Ten years ago, Tunisia started a revolution.
Tonight, its president has suspended parliament.
President Kais Saied announced this evening that he is dismissing Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, suspending parliament for 30 days and assuming executive authority with the assistance of a new prime minister whom he will appoint.
The announcement followed protests across Tunisia today against the government, the political system and the country’s worsening economic and COVID-19 crises.
Crowds have celebrated Saied’s decision in the streets.
His opponents are calling it a coup.
And because all of this has happened only hours ago, I don’t think anybody can responsibly say yet which direction Tunisia is going.
But what happened today is significant far beyond one prime minister losing his job.
Tunisia was supposed to be the Arab Spring success story.
Now the country that demonstrated that an Arab dictatorship could become a democracy is confronting a much harder question:
What happens when democracy succeeds at giving people political freedom but repeatedly fails to give them effective government?
Why Tunisia matters
In December 2010, a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire after years of frustration with unemployment, corruption and harassment by local officials.
The protests that followed eventually forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled Tunisia for more than two decades, from power.
Then something extraordinary happened.
The protests spread.
Egypt.
Libya.
Syria.
Yemen.
Bahrain.
Across the Arab world, people challenged governments that had appeared immovable.
What became known as the Arab Spring created enormous hopes for democratic transformation.
Most of those hopes were eventually crushed.
Egypt’s democratic experiment ended with another authoritarian government.
Libya descended into civil war.
Syria’s uprising became one of the century’s most devastating conflicts.
Yemen collapsed into war.
Tunisia was different.
It adopted a new constitution.
It held competitive elections.
Islamists and secularists negotiated political compromises.
Governments changed without armies taking power.
Civil society organisations helped mediate political crises.
Tunisia did not become a perfect democracy.
But it survived.
For a decade, that alone looked remarkable.
Which makes tonight particularly worrying.
Democracy gave Tunisians something important
It is easy, particularly during political crises, to judge a system only by what it failed to accomplish.
Tunisia’s democracy accomplished something enormous.
People could criticise their government.
Political parties could compete.
Presidents could change.
Opposition groups could organise.
Tunisians gained political freedoms that were severely restricted under Ben Ali.
Those achievements should not disappear from the story simply because Tunisia is now in crisis.
But political freedom was never the only thing Tunisians demanded in 2011.
The revolution was also about jobs.
Corruption.
Regional inequality.
Economic opportunity.
Dignity.
And many of those problems remain.
That creates perhaps the greatest danger to a young democracy:
people can begin associating the failures of their governments with the democratic system itself.
Tunisia’s economy has been struggling for years
Even before COVID-19, Tunisia faced serious economic problems.
Unemployment remained high, particularly among young people.
Regional inequalities persisted.
Public finances deteriorated.
Successive governments struggled to implement reforms.
Then the pandemic arrived.
Tunisia’s economy contracted by more than 8% last year.
Public debt increased dramatically.
Tourism, which is extremely important to the economy, was badly damaged.
Then COVID-19 infections surged again.
Hospitals have come under enormous pressure.
So imagine being a young Tunisian who participated in or grew up after the revolution.
You were told democracy would create a new Tunisia.
Ten years later, you can vote.
You can criticise politicians.
You may still not have a job.
That does not mean democracy caused unemployment.
But politically, the distinction can become less important than economists or political scientists would like.
People judge governments through lived experience.
If democratic governments repeatedly fail to improve that experience, faith in those governments deteriorates.
Eventually, faith in the institutions themselves can deteriorate too.
Tunisia has had politics without enough governing
Part of the problem is institutional.
Tunisia’s post-revolution political system deliberately divided power.
After decades of dictatorship, that made sense.
Concentrating enormous authority in one president had already produced authoritarian rule.
So the 2014 constitution created a system in which political power was distributed between the president, parliament and prime minister.
That creates checks.
It can also create deadlock.
President Saied and Prime Minister Mechichi have been locked in a bitter political confrontation.
Parliament itself is deeply fragmented.
Coalition governments have repeatedly struggled to govern.
Earlier this year, a cabinet reshuffle became another constitutional dispute between Saied and Mechichi.
Meanwhile, Tunisians continued waiting for economic reforms.
This exposes an uncomfortable democratic trade-off.
Institutions need enough checks to prevent one person from becoming too powerful.
But they also need enough capacity to make decisions.
Too much concentrated power risks authoritarianism.
Too much fragmentation risks paralysis.
A political system has to exist somewhere between them.
Tunisia appears to have struggled to find that point.
And then Saied acted
Tonight, President Saied essentially argued that the political system had become incapable of responding to the emergency facing the country.
He invoked Article 80 of Tunisia’s constitution, which allows the president to take exceptional measures when the country faces an imminent danger threatening the state.
Saied says his actions are constitutional.
His opponents strongly disagree.
Rached Ghannouchi, the speaker of parliament and leader of the Islamist Ennahda party, has described what happened as a coup against the revolution and constitution.
This is where things become extremely important.
A constitution allowing emergency powers does not automatically make every use of those powers democratic.
But invoking emergency powers does not automatically make something a coup either.
We need to know what happens next.
Does parliament return?
Are courts able to challenge presidential decisions?
Can opposition parties organise?
Can journalists criticise Saied?
Does the 30-day suspension actually last 30 days?
Are elections respected?
Those questions will tell us far more than the terminology politicians use tonight.
Why are people celebrating?
This may be the most uncomfortable part for anyone who wants a simple story about democracy.
Large numbers of Tunisians appear happy.
People have celebrated in the streets after Saied’s announcement.
That does not prove his decision is democratic.
Popular and democratic are not synonyms.
A majority can support something that weakens democratic institutions.
But dismissing those celebrations would also be a mistake.
People are not necessarily cheering because they suddenly want dictatorship.
Many may be cheering because they are exhausted by a political system they believe has stopped functioning.
That distinction matters.
Authoritarianism does not always arrive because a population suddenly decides freedom is bad.
Sometimes it arrives because people become convinced that normal democratic procedures are incapable of solving an emergency.
Then somebody offers a shortcut.
Give me more power and I will make the system work.
That promise can be extremely attractive when the alternative appears to be endless paralysis.
The problem with shortcuts
There is an obvious argument in Saied’s favour.
If Tunisia’s existing political institutions are genuinely incapable of responding to an extraordinary crisis, perhaps extraordinary action is necessary.
Governments exist to govern.
A parliament that cannot produce effective policy while hospitals struggle and the economy deteriorates is not succeeding simply because it remains procedurally democratic.
But emergency powers create a dangerous problem.
They are easiest to justify precisely when institutional safeguards are most inconvenient.
Parliament slows action.
Courts obstruct decisions.
Opposition parties criticise policy.
Journalists expose mistakes.
From the perspective of an executive trying to solve a crisis, all of those institutions can appear inefficient.
From the perspective of democracy, that inefficiency is partly intentional.
Checks and balances are supposed to make it difficult for one person to exercise unlimited power.
The feature and the flaw are sometimes the same thing.
This is why intentions aren’t enough
Saied may genuinely believe he is saving Tunisia’s democracy.
That is possible.
He may genuinely believe corruption and political paralysis have made extraordinary intervention necessary.
That is also possible.
But democratic institutions cannot depend entirely on whether one particular leader has good intentions.
If the president can suspend parliament because he determines that the country faces sufficient danger, then the important question becomes:
Who constrains the president?
This is the institutional problem I wrote about after Haiti’s president was assassinated.
Strong political systems do not work because they always have good leaders.
They work because they remain functional when leaders are incompetent, unpopular or ambitious.
A constitution designed around the assumption that the person exercising emergency powers will always use them responsibly is not much of a safeguard.
Ennahda also cannot pretend nothing went wrong
At the same time, defending democratic institutions does not require pretending Tunisia’s existing political establishment has governed well.
Ennahda has been one of the country’s most important political forces since the revolution.
Its opponents blame it for corruption, political dysfunction and economic failure.
Some criticism is ideological because Ennahda is an Islamist party.
But some reflects genuine frustration with a political class that has spent years negotiating coalitions while economic conditions remained poor.
If Ennahda and other parliamentary parties respond to tonight’s crisis only by saying “defend democracy”, they may miss why so many citizens are willing to watch parliament disappear temporarily.
Democratic institutions cannot survive indefinitely on the argument that the alternative is worse.
Eventually, they have to demonstrate that they can govern.
That may be the larger lesson.
Democracy needs outputs as well as inputs
I have mostly thought about democracy through what we might call its inputs.
Elections.
Political parties.
Free speech.
Constitutions.
Checks and balances.
Those things determine how power is obtained and constrained.
But citizens also judge politics through outputs.
Jobs.
Public services.
Security.
Economic growth.
Healthcare.
A government can have excellent democratic inputs and terrible outputs.
An authoritarian government can sometimes produce impressive outputs while denying political freedom.
That does not make authoritarianism preferable.
It means democratic legitimacy has two components that cannot be completely separated.
People want a voice.
They also want the state to work.
A political system that gives people only one of those things may eventually place the other in danger.
The Arab Spring question has changed
Ten years ago, Tunisia seemed to answer one question:
Can an Arab country overthrow an authoritarian government and construct a democracy?
Tunisia demonstrated that it could.
The question now is harder:
Can that democracy govern effectively enough to survive?
Holding elections was only the first stage.
Building parties capable of governing was another.
Creating institutions that divide power without paralysing it is another.
Producing economic improvements is another.
Maintaining public trust while governments inevitably make mistakes may be hardest of all.
Democratisation is not an event that ends when the dictator leaves.
It may take decades.
I don’t know whether this is a coup
Not yet.
It happened hours ago.
Anyone confidently announcing Tunisia’s political future tonight is predicting rather than reporting.
Maybe Saied restores normal constitutional government after the emergency.
Maybe his intervention breaks a political deadlock and creates space for reform.
Maybe parliament returns.
Or maybe tonight becomes the moment historians eventually identify as the beginning of Tunisia’s democratic collapse.
The difference will be determined by what Saied does with the power he has taken.
That is why the next 30 days matter.
If emergency powers really are temporary, their expiration should not depend entirely on whether the person holding them feels the emergency has ended.
There needs to be a route back.
A date.
Institutions.
Independent oversight.
Because every leader who concentrates power can claim the circumstances are exceptional.
The real democratic test is whether they surrender that power when the exception passes.
Democracy cannot survive on procedure alone
I still think what Tunisia built after 2011 matters enormously.
Perhaps more than ever.
But this week’s crisis demonstrates something uncomfortable about democracy.
Freedom is not self-sustaining.
People have to believe the institutions protecting that freedom are useful.
If parliament becomes synonymous with paralysis, political parties with corruption and elections with governments that cannot solve basic problems, then someone promising to bypass those institutions begins to sound less like a threat.
They begin to sound efficient.
That may be one of the most dangerous moments a democracy can reach.
The answer cannot be to tell frustrated citizens that economic hardship does not matter because at least they can vote.
Nor can the answer be to abandon democratic restraints because governing democratically is difficult.
A functioning democracy has to accomplish both.
It has to constrain power.
And it has to use power effectively.
Ten years ago, Tunisians demonstrated that people could remove an authoritarian ruler.
Tonight they face a different test.
Whether the democratic institutions built afterwards are strong enough to survive the public’s disappointment with them.
Because perhaps the greatest threat to democracy is not always somebody openly promising dictatorship.
Sometimes it is somebody promising to make democracy work better if we temporarily stop using parts of it.
