Tunisia's Quest for Democracy: Unfinished Domestic Revolution and Regional Geopolitical Entanglements

Tunisia is at a crossroads following President Kaïs Saïed’s moves that risk endangering the country’s decade-long trajectory towards democratisation. Tunisia’s long, complex and still open-ended experience with popular mobilisation allows to capture several aspects related to the composition, claims and strategies of the protesters, on the one hand, and to the authorities’ responses and the interferences and pressures of external players, on the other hand. Furthermore, when conceptually distinguishing between democratic transition and consolidation, the importance of addressing socio-economic issues early on during the democratic transition phase in order to prevent them from endangering democratic consolidation emerges forcefully from a policy perspective.