Democratic backsliding in Tunisia: A U.S. foreign policy memo
Policy Memo: Democratic Backsliding in Tunisia
James D. Newcomb
Robertson School of Government
Regent University
GOV 723: Democracy and Democratic Development
Dr. A. J. Nolte
June 26, 2026
I attest this submission is my own original work, and was not created with unauthorized use of AI in accordance with the course syllabus.
Executive Summary
Tunisia is not presently on a credible path toward stable democracy. While superficial appearances of continuity remain, the trajectory toward legitimate democracy has reversed. Since 2021, President Kais Saied has moved Tunisia toward what Łukasz Jakubiak (2023) describes as “undemocratic hyper-presidentialism,” which has concentrated executive authority at the expense of its parliament, and judicial independence. Tunisia’s greatest risk is not civil war, imminent state collapse, or uncontrolled violence. Its greater risk could be described as institutional regression under the appearance of order.
The United States should assume that Tunisia’s democratic backsliding is real, durable, and unlikely to be reversed by standard democracy programming protocols. Any strategy with Tunisia is unlikely to be effective without clear diplomatic priorities and assistance tradeoffs. Without such measures, U.S. policy with Tunisia may become aligned with democratic development rhetorically, while in reality enabling authoritarian consolidation of power.
Tunisia’s current crisis did not begin with Saied, though his presidency has accelerated it. After the 2011 revolution, Tunisia made genuine democratic gains by instituting competitive elections, a new constitution, and a political compromise that distinguished it from other Arab Spring cases. Yet those gains never quite answered the many grievances that brought Tunisians into the streets in the first place. Unemployment and corruption have not meaningfully declined in the intervening time (Prasad and Kumar, 2024; Syahba & Fahadayna, 2024; World Bank Group, 2025). Saied rose to power through this breach, presenting himself as “the voice of the people” against a discredited political class.
The problem for U.S. policy is that Saied’s supposed “cure” has only made the disease worse. His anti-party and anti-corruption rhetoric initially spoke to real public frustrations, but it was just rhetoric. The 2022 constitution strengthened the presidency at the expense of parliament and the government. True political competition has dissipated; any opposition is fragmented and unable to offer a credible alternative. Meanwhile, the economic pressures that helped discredit the post-2011 order remain unresolved (Jakubiak).
Democratic recovery in Tunisia remains a possibility. Its populace is educated, and the memory of the post-2011 transition is still relatively fresh in their minds. Yet it faces economic stagnation, and an administration that treats its opposition as impediments to progress rather than partners in national recovery. U.S. policy needs to be designed around this reality. It’s not that Tunisia is beyond hope, but it is regressing. A policy that does not impose real consequences for further regression will in reality make this regression permanent.
From Arab Spring Success Story to Democratic Regression
The “Arab Spring” sparked a great deal of protest in countries in North Africa and the Middle East, yet very little by the way of permanent democratic progress. Tunisia is considered an exception to this. It overthrew an authoritarian government, opened political spaces, held competitive elections, and in 2014 adopted a new constitution. For a time, Tunisia offered hope that democratic transition in the Arab world was possible given the right institutional and social conditions.
Prasad and Kumar (2024) argue that prior to the Jasmine Revolution of 2011, under Ben Ali, Tunisia combined authoritarian political control with selective economic liberalization. The regime did produce some measurable economic gains, including growth and expansion in the service sector, but those benefits were distributed unevenly. Coastal areas and regime-connected elites benefited disproportionately, while interior regions remained marginalized. Crony capitalism, youth unemployment, corruption, and regional inequality steadily undermined the Ben Ali regime’s legitimacy and helped create the conditions for the Revolution. The 2011 revolution was reason for hope, yet had immense expectations. Tunisians did not want elections for the sake of having elections. They were demanding accountability, inclusion, and an end to the corruption of the old regime.
The early transition made meaningful progress on the political side. Civil society became more active, media space widened, and political parties that had been repressed under Ben Ali entered formal politics. Ennahda, the major Islamist party, won the 2011 Constituent Assembly elections and participated in coalition government. The 2014 constitution became a landmark achievement, especially when compared with the likes of Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen who never achieved anywhere near the success of Tunisia.
Yet the new system quickly revealed weaknesses that became more and more visible over time. Tunisia’s democratic settlement depended heavily on elite compromise, especially between Islamist and secular factions. This compromise helped prevent the kind of polarization that destroyed attempted democratic experiments elsewhere in the region. But compromise at the elite level did not produce legitimacy at the popular level. The political class increasingly appeared self-protective, fragmented, and unable to address the material grievances that had driven the revolution. The result was a democracy that functioned procedurally but struggled to prove itself substantively.
This is not to suggest that Tunisians were inherently unsuited for democracy, nor that the 2011 transition was meaningless. It ultimately failed because the democratic order could not translate political opening into sustained public confidence. In spite of changes on the superficial level, the status quo remained. Young Tunisians who had substantively helped animate the revolution, saw little evidence that democratic politics had actually improved their prospects in reality.
Kevin Koehler (2023) describes this process as a “breakdown by disengagement.” In his account, Tunisia’s representative institutions did not collapse primarily because of an ambitious president. They weakened because citizens increasingly withdrew from conventional politics, while political elites operated within a protected sphere of competition that became detached from ordinary social demands. Tunisia’s democratic regression did not begin with Kais Saied’s power grab in 2021. Saied merely capitalized on a political crisis that had hollowed out public trust years prior.
By the time Saied was elected in 2019, Tunisia had already entered a period of deep public frustration. His outsider image, anti-party rhetoric, and appeal to “the people” against a corrupt political class resonated because they addressed real disillusionment. He presented himself as a solution to the failures of representative democracy. His image of an “outsider” fighting for “the people” was received because of legitimate disillusionment. But these promises of renewal proved to be shallow. In July 2021, Saied suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister, and began ruling by decree. The democratic fatigue that had weakened Tunisia’s post-2011 order became the political opening through which executive domination advanced.
As this pertains to U.S. policy in the region, Tunisia’s democratic regression cannot be treated as merely a constitutional or electoral problem. It is a legitimacy problem. The post-2011 order was democratic enough on the surface to attract international praise, but in practice it was not responsive enough to sustain public confidence. Any U.S. strategy that seeks to support democratic recovery must therefore address both institutional regression and the grievances that made many Tunisians receptive to anti-institutional politics in the first place.
The 2022 Tunisian constitution formalized much of this shift. Jakubiak argues that the new constitutional arrangement moved Tunisia away from the balanced semi-presidentialism of the 2014 constitution and toward an “undemocratic hyper-presidentialism,” in which the president dominates the parliament and judiciary rather than being checked by them.
This is not to say that Tunisia has become a fully closed authoritarian state. Elections occur, there are differing political parties, and the state hardly functions as a military dictatorship. But the relevant question is not whether Tunisia possesses a form of democracy, but whether this democratic apparatus will actually constrain executive power, or provide citizens with meaningful political choice.
On that standard, Tunisia is moving in the wrong direction. Freedom House’s 2025 assessment rates Tunisia as “Partly Free” and describes a system in which Saied has expanded executive authority while weakening the judiciary, legislature, and electoral commission. That trajectory is consistent with existing academic literature on Tunisia’s post-2021 decline.
Saied’s governing apparatus is especially difficult because it is framed in ambiguous language of popular sovereignty. His appeal was never to govern more efficiently. It rested on claims that he represents “the people” against corrupt parties, self-interested elites, and institutions that failed the revolution. Desrues and Gobe (2026) describe this evolution as a movement from inclusive populist constitutionalism toward authoritarian “Caesarism,” in which the president identifies himself with the popular will and treats intermediate institutions as obstacles rather than safeguards.
This makes the current system more than a technical constitutional problem. It is a legitimacy problem. Saied’s consolidation of power rests on the claim that representative institutions themselves were the source of Tunisia’s failure. Tunisia’s post-2011 democracy had already lost public confidence before Saied dismantled much of it. Koehler’s “breakdown by disengagement” framework is useful here. He argues that Tunisia’s democratic breakdown was not simply a standard case of executive takeover. It also reflected a deeper crisis of representation, in which citizens withdrew from conventional politics while parties and elites competed within a sphere increasingly detached from public demands. Saied did not invent that disengagement. He gave it a governing form. His anti-party rhetoric succeeded because many Tunisians already believed that parties, parliament, and elite compromise had failed to address corruption, unemployment, regional inequality, and everyday economic hardship.
Economic conditions compound the governance problem. Tunisia’s democratic backsliding cannot be separated from the country’s unresolved development crisis. The World Bank reports weak recent growth and continuing structural constraints, including regulatory barriers and a challenging policy environment. These conditions do not automatically result in authoritarianism, but they don’t make democratic progress easier either. To put it plainly, “democracy” is tantamount to failure in the minds of “the people”. And this is the inherent danger for U.S. policy. Assistance in implementing democracy in a foreign country must not be aimed exclusively at procedure. It must implement procedures and institutions that will address the very real and inevitable problems associated with authoritarianism.
U.S. Interests in Tunisia
Despite its modest size, Tunisia’s location makes it strategically significant to the United States. Its democratic regression therefore affects more than Tunisia’s domestic future. An unstable Tunisia risks instability with U.S. allies in Southern Europe. Tunisia also borders Libya, which has been unstable since the fall of Qaddafi. The already contested credibility of a U.S. presence in the region risks being further undermined should Tunisia’s regression continue.
Since 2011, U.S. policy toward Tunisia has generally rested on two pillars: democracy promotion and security cooperation (Henneberg, 2023). These were sensible policies when Tunisia was thought to be the democratic exception of the Arab Spring. Supporting Tunisia allowed Washington to advance a positive regional example without the financial and reputational costs associated with regime change or military occupation. Tunisia also offered a credible ally in a region affected by terrorism, instability in Libya, and general insecurity throughout the Mediterranean region.
These pillars of U.S. policy in Tunisia now merit greater scrutiny since Saied’s recent consolidation of executive power. Tunisia is clearly regressing from its democratic gains, yet it remains relevant to U.S. security and regional interests. Should relations between the U.S. and Tunisia falter, we would face significant loss of credibility, and open the door for other interested parties such as Russia and China to gain a foothold in the region. Conversely, maintaining the status quo risks U.S. assistance being interpreted as tacit approval of an overtly authoritarian political order.
Herein lies the true policy problem: the United States has enough self-interest in Tunisia to stay engaged diplomatically, yet it lacks sufficient leverage with the Saied regime to significantly alter the nation’s internal trajectory alone.
There are also security interests at play. Tunisia has been a useful partner on border security and counterterrorism, particularly given the persistent fragility of Libya and the growth of instability across the greater Sahel region. However, security cooperation that is detached from governance conditions can become counterproductive. Othmeni (2024) offered a critique of U.S. assistance immediately after 2011. He argued that U.S. support for Tunisia’s transition placed heavy emphasis on the security sector, while institutional reform and transitional justice received less sustained attention. If Othmeni’s assessment is accurate, this imbalance would potentially result in negative returns should it be repeated under more authoritarian conditions.
Economic stability is another U.S. interest, both directly and through our European partners. The public frustration in wake of Tunisia’s regression ultimately undermines U.S. credibility in the region even more. U.S. assistance should therefore support economic growth, employment, and opportunities in ways that are visibly connected to actual citizens rather than political elites and their cronies.
Washington cannot credibly claim to support democratic development abroad while treating Tunisia’s regression as a mere inconvenience to be swept under the rug. The U.S. interest is in preventing a strategically located partner from becoming an overtly authoritarian state which will lead to instability in the entire region.
Policy Options
The United States has no cost-free option in Tunisia. The country’s democratic trajectory is negative, but Tunisia remains too strategically relevant to ignore and too politically constrained to transform from the outside. U.S. policy must therefore choose among imperfect approaches. The central question is not whether Washington can restore Tunisian democracy directly. It cannot. The more realistic question is whether U.S. policy will slow authoritarian consolidation, preserve remaining democratic space, and avoid strengthening the very institutions and incentives now driving regression. We therefore consider three options regarding U.S. policy toward Tunisia.
1: Maintain the current approach with limited adjustment. Under this option, the United States would continue diplomatic engagement, security cooperation, and development assistance while expressing concern about democratic backsliding through routine statements and private diplomatic channels. This option would prioritize access and continuity. It would avoid a major rupture with President Saied’s government and preserve cooperation on counterterrorism, border security, migration-related stability, and regional diplomacy. It would also limit the risk that Saied could use U.S. pressure to reinforce nationalist claims that foreign actors are interfering in Tunisia’s sovereignty.
The advantage of this option is that it is administratively easy and diplomatically familiar. It keeps programs moving, protects existing relationships, and avoids forcing decisions that the interagency process may not be prepared to sustain. It also recognizes a real constraint: Tunisia’s opposition is fragmented, civil society is under pressure, and there is no obvious democratic alternative waiting to govern. A sudden break with Tunis could reduce U.S. visibility without producing democratic improvement.
The disadvantage is that this approach would likely amount to acceptance of the current trajectory. Tunisia’s regression is not rhetorical or temporary. It has been institutionalized through constitutional change, executive dominance, weakened checks and balances, and pressure on civic and political actors. Jakubiak’s analysis of the 2022 constitution suggests that presidential dominance is now embedded in the governing framework, not merely expressed through Saied’s personal style. A status quo policy would preserve U.S. access, but it would not meaningfully alter the incentives facing the Tunisian government. In practice, it would signal that democratic regression carries limited consequences so long as basic security cooperation continues.
2: Apply stronger public pressure and reduce cooperation until Tunisia reverses course. Under this option, the United States would sharply condition or reduce assistance, publicly criticize anti-democratic measures, limit high-level engagement, and coordinate with democratic partners to impose clearer costs for repression, electoral manipulation, and attacks on judicial independence or civil society. This option would place democratic credibility at the center of U.S. policy.
The advantage of this approach is clarity. It would avoid the common problem of condemning authoritarian practices while continuing engagement in ways that make such condemnation easy to discount. It would also send a signal to Tunisian civil society, opposition actors, journalists, lawyers, and judges that the United States does not view them as expendable in pursuit of a narrower security relationship. Given Tunisia’s symbolic importance as the former democratic success story of the Arab Spring, such a signal would carry regional significance.
The disadvantage is that maximal pressure may exceed available U.S. leverage. Tunisia’s government could respond by limiting cooperation, accusing Washington of neo-colonial interference, or seeking alternative partnerships. Public pressure could also unintentionally strengthen Saied’s political narrative. His governing style rests heavily on the claim that he represents the people against corrupt elites and external interference. Desrues and Gobe’s description of Saied’s drift toward Caesarism is relevant here. A leader who claims to embody the popular will can easily portray outside criticism as an attack on national sovereignty rather than a defense of democratic institutions. A pressure-only strategy could therefore be morally clear but operationally weak.
3: Calibrated conditional engagement. Under this option, the United States would remain engaged with Tunisia but restructure assistance and diplomacy around specific democratic, legal, and developmental benchmarks. Washington would continue cooperation where it serves legitimate shared interests, but it would draw clearer distinctions between assistance that strengthens society and assistance that strengthens an increasingly centralized executive. This approach would shift resources toward civil society resilience, independent media, legal defense, local governance, youth employment, anti-corruption transparency, and economic opportunity in marginalized regions. Security cooperation would continue, but with tighter human rights safeguards and conditions designed to prevent U.S.-supported capacity from being used against peaceful civic or political actors.
The advantage of calibrated conditional engagement is that it preserves leverage without normalizing regression. It acknowledges that Tunisia cannot be treated as a standard democratic partner, but also recognizes that isolation would likely reduce U.S. influence. It also fits the nature of Tunisia’s crisis. Koehler’s “breakdown by disengagement” framework suggests that the problem is not only executive overreach from above but also a deeper loss of representation and public trust from below. A useful U.S. strategy must therefore do more than demand elections. It must help preserve the social and institutional conditions under which representative politics could become credible again.
This option also recognizes that Tunisia’s democratic and development crises are linked. Assistance that supports youth employment, regional opportunity, transparent local governance, and anti-corruption capacity would not be separate from democracy policy. It would address some of the grievances that made anti-party populism attractive in the first place. The fragile democratization literature points to the relationship among economic weakness, corruption, freedom scores, and democratic decline, while broader historical accounts of Tunisia’s transition emphasize the persistence of unemployment, inequality, and distrust after 2011 (Syahba and Fahadayna; Prasad and Kumar). U.S. assistance should therefore avoid treating democracy as a procedural exercise detached from the lived conditions of citizens.
The disadvantage is that calibrated conditional engagement is difficult to execute. It requires sustained senior-level attention, interagency discipline, and a willingness to enforce conditions even when doing so complicates security or diplomatic cooperation. If the conditions are announced but not applied, the policy will become another layer of familiar language over an unchanged reality. If assistance is redirected without protection for local partners, civil society actors could face additional pressure. If Washington acts without coordination with Europe and multilateral lenders, the Tunisian government may simply look elsewhere for less conditional support.
Recommended U.S. Policy and Assistance Strategy
The recommended U.S. approach is calibrated conditional engagement. Washington should remain engaged with Tunisia, but should not mistake engagement for influence. Standard diplomacy, democracy programming, and development assistance are unlikely to change Tunisia’s trajectory unless they can be attributed to institutional changes and economic outcomes that rebuild public confidence.
U.S. policy should pursue five linked priorities:
1. Security and governance assistance should be conditioned on “rule-of-law benchmarks” as endorsed by Jakubiak. U.S.-supported training, equipment, and institutional support should therefore be reviewed to ensure they are not used to monitor, intimidate, or suppress lawful civic and political activity. As Jakubiak notes, if the presidency now dominates both the executive and legislative elements of the government, efforts to strengthen his regime will only exacerbate the problem.
2. Democracy assistance should move beyond a narrow “elections-first’ model. Elections are important, but a U.S. policy hyper-focused on elections while the institutional environment has been weakened will lead to negative returns on investment. U.S. assistance should promote accountability by way of an independent media, civic education, and documentation of abuses. Koehler’s account of “breakdown by disengagement” suggests that Tunisia’s crisis is not only constitutional; it is a deeper crisis of representation in which citizens withdrew from politics as parties and elites became detached from public demands. Superficial support of public elections, while dismissing the root causes of public discontent, will further undermine U.S. credibility in Tunisia.
3. Promote local economic development. Unemployment and corruption have led to the perception among Tunisians that democratic development failed to improve their day to day lives. Therefore U.S. assistance should prioritize things such as vocational training, micro-businesses, even women’s economic participation. Prasad and Kumar emphasize that uneven development, youth unemployment, and regional marginalization helped undermine the old regime and continued to burden the post-2011 order. Syahba and Fahadayna similarly link Tunisia’s democratic decline to economic weakness, corruption, and the failure of political parties to maintain public confidence. Ultimately, political reform and economic development should be treated as different ingredients in the same recipe of promoting democratic development in Tunisia.
4. Anti-corruption and transparency support should continue, albeit with caution. Saied has used anti-corruption rhetoric effectively because corruption is a real grievance. Yet any anti-corruption campaign is ineffective if it is detached from independent institutions and procedural accountability. U.S. support should focus on localized accountability measures such as budget oversight, investigative journalism, and civil society monitoring rather than attempting to mediate centralized campaigns controlled by the executive.
5. The United States should coordinate pressure with neighboring European states, the European Union, the World Bank, the IMF, and other influential actors. Washington does not have enough leverage by itself to influence Tunisia’s democratic backsliding. Coordinated pressure from these actors should focus on measurable gains in judicial independence, media freedom, and credible political competition.
This strategy should also avoid making President Saied the sole channel of engagement. Desrues and Gobe argue that Saied increasingly presents the presidency as the embodiment of the people’s will; under those conditions, direct engagement with society becomes more important, not less. Focusing on more localized institutions is key to promoting true democratic progress.
Such a strategy will not quickly reverse Tunisia’s democratic backsliding, nor will it resolve the nation’s economic pressures. But continuing with the status quo will lead to potentially severe consequences. Calibrated conditional engagement keeps U.S. policy aligned with the conditions under which democratic recovery might remain possible. The United States cannot directly repair Tunisia’s crisis of representation from the outside, but it can avoid worsening the problem, and prevent American assistance from helping an increasingly centralized system maintain the appearance of stability while accountability in its government erodes.
Comparative Lessons: Good and Bad Ideas from Other Transitions
Like any nation, Tunisia’s democratic trajectory and future prospects are unique. Yet comparative experience is still useful. The most relevant lesson is that democratic regression is not necessarily an open rejection of democracy as much as it reflects dissent from the promises of democracy, albeit attempted to be instituted perhaps faster than is prudent. Saied did not abolish politics in the name of authoritarianism. He weakened representative institutions, claiming they had failed the people, and in the process emboldened authoritarianism in Tunisia. This should be the true warning: policies that preserve state stability while ignoring institutional erosion may buy time, but at the expense of long-term democratic progress.
Egypt post-2013 offers the clearest bad example. Tunisia has not experienced an overt military seizure of power comparable to Egypt’s 2013 coup. Saied’s consolidation has taken place primarily through emergency measures, constitutional revision, presidential decree, and support from security institutions rather than direct military rule (Bellin, 2018; Desrues & Gobe; Jakubiak). Still, the lesson is when outside actors prioritize security cooperation and regime stability over democratic accountability, authoritarian consolidation becomes easier to normalize. Egypt demonstrates how quickly a post-uprising democratic opening can be recast as a threat to order, and how outside partners can adjust to that reality in the name of counterterrorism, regional stability, and access. Tunisia’s early successes have allowed it to avoid the fate as has befallen Egypt. For now. And U.S. policy toward Tunisia should be focused on ensuring this backsliding is contained, lest it become overt authoritarianism like Egypt.
Turkey and Hungary warn us that elections alone are meaningless when executives capture or hollow out the institutions that give elections legitimacy. Both nations show how elected leaders can use constitutional amendments, judicial pressure, media control, and attacks on opposition actors to weaken democracy while retaining electoral procedures. This comparison is especially relevant to Tunisia because Saied’s project has been legalistic and constitutional as much as it has been coercive. The danger is not that Tunisia will stop holding elections altogether. The danger is that elections will become meaningless as it pertains to true government accountability and economic opportunity its people.
There are also more constructive examples. Indonesia’s transition after Suharto suggests that democratic recovery requires gradual institution-building, decentralization, and enough political competition to make real alternatives of power possible. Indonesia’s path was imperfect, but it shows that authoritarian legacies can be weakened when reform is distributed across institutions rather than concentrated in one heroic leader. Tunisians must recognize that democratic recovery will not come through a single presidential correction. It will require slowly but deliberately rebuilding parties, courts, civil society, local governance, and public trust.
South Korea and Taiwan teach us that economic development alone does not automatically produce democracy. But a growing educated middle class, civic organization, international pressure, and institutional openings can create conditions for democratic transition over time. Tunisia has some of these assets, but these assets can erode if civic actors are isolated, young people lose hope, and opposition politics remains fragmented.
The United States should not mistake surface order for democratic stability. Egypt shows the danger of accepting authoritarian restoration for the sake of security. Turkey and Hungary show the danger of accepting elections without institutional independence. Afghanistan and Iraq show the limits of externally designed political systems. Indonesia, South Korea, and Taiwan show that democratic recovery depends on domestic actors, institutional safeguards, social trust, and credible economic improvement over time.
Conclusion
Tunisia is no longer the democratic success story Washington once hoped it would become. Treating it as such would misread the current reality and risk converting U.S. assistance into support for authoritarian stabilization. At the same time, abandoning Tunisia would reduce American leverage, weaken remaining democratic actors, and leave the field more open to partners less concerned with accountability, rights, or institutional pluralism.
Yet the democratic gains following the Arab Spring are not without meaning. Tunisians remember the hope they once had, and with skillful intervention, and a great deal of patience, Tunisians can perhaps see they were misled by Saied’s portrayal of democratic progress as the cause of its problems.
The best available approach is to recognize that democratic recovery must be pursued by Tunisians themselves. But U.S. policy can still have an influence. It can impose costs for further regression, avoid strengthening coercive or executive capacity without safeguards, support civil society and independent institutions, and address the economic grievances that helped discredit the post-revolutionary order.
Tunisia’s democratic crisis is ultimately a crisis of legitimacy. The post-2011 system created elections, parties, constitutional procedures, and international confidence. It did not sufficiently deliver dignity, opportunity, accountability, or public trust. Those things simply cannot be developed within a specific timeframe. U.S. policy must be focused on this, as well as not unintentionally abetting further backsliding through tacit approval of Saied’s actions.
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