Introduction: Theological Contestations and Political Coalition-Building

Closing the Arab Democratic Gap: A Re-Assessment of the Tunisian Democratic Transition

“…Some have attempted to qualify these views, by emphasizing the diversity of Islamist movements and the need to consider each of them separately, rather than as a unified category that obscures local trends (Esposito et al, 2018;Sadiki, 2018). Indeed, in some cases exclusion rather than inclusion has been viewed as the cause of moderation: Cavatorta and Merone argue that state repression and social isolation led Tunisia's Islamist party Ennahda toward more moderate positions before the revolution, making it a regional exception (Cavatorta and Merone, 2013).…”

“…The Peculiar Story of Ennahda If Tunisia stands alone as the success story of the Arab Spring, Ennahda is often viewed as an unusual and potentially non-representative examples of Islamist movements and its moderation and democratization tendencies have been heavily scrutinized. For many, its democratic participation can be attributed to the dynamics identified by Villalón: they argue that its choices have been directed by its intrinsic edge in the democratic game brought by the popularity of political Islam, which led it to embrace democracy and kept it invested in it (Noueihed and Warren, 2012;Esposito et al, 2018), that they are the result of progressive socialization and civic habituation (Dalmasso and Cavatorta, 2013;Sadiki, 2018), or that both phenomena are playing out at the same time (McCarthy, 2015).…”

“…The design of the electoral system, which made it more difficult for one party to obtain a majority unlike in Egypt, has also been highlighted as a potential cause, though this can be traced back to Ghannouchi's leadership (Ghanem, 2016). For many, this combination was too fragile to be replicated elsewhere -Tunisia was an anomaly in the Middle East, the product of exceptional circumstances that included the absence of external meddling, be it by armed forces or foreign powers, and a particularly clairvoyant elite (Bellin, 2013;Esposito et al, 2018). In any case, Ennahda's moderation has been attributed to a range of factors that questions the strict causal line drawn by Villalón: this does not invalidate the model, but emphasizes the fact that when transposed to a new context, it needs to accommodate a wider range of factors shaping actors' behavior.…”