Mass-Elite Cleavages in Tunisia: The Revolution as a Critical Juncture (2010–2016)

Tunisia is one of the world’s newest democracies and the only democracy in the Arab world. As a critical juncture, the Tunisian revolution in 2010-2011 calls for exploring the development of mass-elite cleavages in new democracies. A few articles have addressed political cleavages in Tunisia (Abduljaber 2018; van Hamme, Gana and Ben Rebbah 2014) without specifically studying mass-elite cleavages. The paper contributes to the literature by addressing the following research question: To what extent has the Tunisian revolution, as a critical juncture, aggravated mass-elite cleavages in Tunisia between 2010 and 2016? For example, is the long standing Islamic-secular division the most salient political cleavage in Tunisia or is it waning to give rise to modern-traditional cleavages? Political support to the Islamic Ennahdha Party, as evident from election results, has fluctuated since 2011 but has seen a coming back after winning the 2018 municipal elections. What about economic and territorial cleavages? The ongoing national strike in late November 2018 of 650,000 Tunisian civil servants over pay increase is one of many examples of mass-elite economic policy cleavage. The paper uses Tunisia as a case study between 2010 and 2016. To capture mass preferences, the paper utilizes the Arab Barometer’s three-wave surveys on Tunisia in 2010, 2012 and 2016 and the voting patterns in the 2011, 2014 and 2018 elections. To capture elite preferences, the paper uses party manifestos and the publicly-available legislative voting results. This article is part of a larger project that examines the effects of structural conditions (including political cleavages) and elite interactions (via power sharing) on regime stability in 18 Arab countries between 2005 and 2016.