Democratic Backsliding in Tunisia: Beyond executive aggrandizement

Democratic backsliding and authoritarian populism have become global phenomena, affecting established and emerging democracies alike. While most explanations emphasise institutional weakness, elite strategies, or charismatic populist leadership, this paper aputs forth a different claim: political dissatisfaction is the central causal driver of democratic erosion allowing for executive aggrandizement. The article develops a general analytical framework explaining how dissatisfaction reshapes citizen engagement, weakens institutional resistance, and facilitates authoritarian consolidation, and applies this model to the case of Tunisia. The core argument is that dissatisfaction is not simply political apathy or episodic anger, but a durable, socially embedded condition that alters how citizens relate to democratic institutions. When dissatisfaction becomes widespread, democratic institutions remain formally intact but become socially hollowed out. Citizens withdraw support from parties, parliaments, and elections, lowering the societal costs of violating democratic rules. Under these conditions, democratic backsliding can occur rapidly and with limited resistance, even in the absence of strong populist leadership. The Tunisian case illustrates these dynamics with unusual clarity. After being celebrated as the sole democratic success of the Arab uprisings, Tunisia experienced an abrupt reversal following President Kaïs Saied’s 25 July 2021 power grab. This shift occurred despite his weak political base, limited ideological coherence, lack of party organisation, and modest personal charisma. The paper argues that this apparent paradox can only be explained by the long-term accumulation of political dissatisfaction among Tunisian citizens since the mid-2010s. Empirically, the study combines longitudinal survey data (Arab Barometer and Afrobarometer, 2014–2024) with electoral, organisational, and qualitative evidence. It operationalises dissatisfaction through indicators of trust in institutions, confidence in democracy, perceptions of representation, and political efficacy. These data are used to test five mechanisms through which dissatisfaction affects regime trajectories: (1) increased tolerance for extra-constitutional measures; (2) declining electoral participation and growing receptivity to anti-system appeals; (3) erosion and fragmentation of political parties; (4) demobilisation of civil society; and (5) paralysis of intermediary organisations that adopt ambiguous or conciliatory positions to preserve organisational survival. The findings show that dissatisfaction functioned both as a source of legitimacy for anti-system rhetoric and as a permissive social environment for authoritarian consolidation. Rather than viewing Tunisia’s democratic collapse as an elite-driven event, the paper demonstrates how socially embedded dissatisfaction systematically reduced resistance to executive aggrandizement and facilitated a rapid process of autocratisation from within. By placing dissatisfaction at the centre of the analysis, this paper offers a generalisable model of democratic backsliding applicable to other new democracies. It also advances the workshop’s broader agenda by showing that forms of engagement beyond voting, especially withdrawal and demobilisation, can have profound and unintended consequences for the quality of governance and regime survival.