The impact of political parties and coalition building on Tunisia's democratic future

Abstract

This paper examines political parties in Tunisia's National Constituent Assembly as a method to evaluate prospects for the country's democratic future. After reviewing relevant literature on democratic transitions and the relationship between religion and democracy, particularly in the Arab World, it considers Tunisia's prominent parties and coalitions. The political parties' histories of activism, personalism, competition, and weakly differentiated platforms have contributed to the rapid stabilisation of a fragmented party system. While game theory supports the view that the multiplicity of secular opposition parties would benefit from coalition building or mergers, Tunisian parties have taken few concrete steps towards integration. Furthermore, such efforts must consider the possibility of radicalising the on-going debate on the role of religion: a perceived threat from an adamantly secular opposition could alienate Ennahdha, forcing it to acquiesce to more extreme voices in an effort to maintain its dominance. It is unlikely, however, that the future of Tunisia's young democracy will depend solely upon the number and organisation of its parties, but will rather rely on how the new political actors respond to the myriad other challenges of political development. Those challenges are also opportunities for political differentiation on non-religious grounds that could contribute to the foundation of a dynamic, effective, and representative political system.

Keywords:

• Tunisia
• democracy
• political parties
• party system
• coalitions
• democratic transition

Acknowledgements

The author would like to gratefully acknowledge the guidance and feedback from Dr Hamadi Redissi, support of Dr Mounir Khelifa, encouragement of Dr Barbara Hicks, and hospitality of the Dziri family, without whom this research would not have been possible.

Notes

Note that in order to avoid confusion with the transliteration, this article uses the spelling consistent with the party's English-language material, namely ‘Ennahdha’. Alternate spellings include but are not limited to al Nahda, An-Nahda, and Ennahda.

Unfortunately, no representative from either CPR or Ettakatol was able to meet with the author although such input would certainly prove useful in analysing the reasons for and consequences of both party's partnerships with Ennahdha and their respective internal divisions. It is imperative that the future research fills this gap.

Not all opposition parties or lists in the 23rd October elections were secular or leftist, and some represented other Islamist groupings. However, this paper focuses on the leftist players seen as active opposition to the governing troika for several reasons: First, Ennahdha is seen as the major Islamist voice with almost no viable competition from ideologically similar associations. Second, the leftist parties have an established history and staying power, despite poor showings in the elections; they will continue to be active voices in Tunisian politics regardless of current electoral fortunes. Last, this paper focuses on parties simply because of their empirical dominance. An examination of all individuals not included in the governing coalition would be disparate and unhelpful. Furthermore, it is expected that many of these groups will have short life expectancies, and either die out or become part of the parties examined as political learning promotes effective voting strategies (see below).

Romdhane (2012) alleges that the split occurred because PDP officials preferred a situation in which all parties were subsumed under PDP leadership, but PDM and PTT leaderships were committed to creating a new option for voters that would represent them more effectively. Hnaien (2012) of the former PDP and current Al-Jumhuri explains that the parties decided to work on separate coalitions because of natural ideological groupings.

The Nash equilibrium does not necessarily correspond to a reduction in the number of parties, but rather the stable system which may or may not correspond to fewer parties.

Using Philpott's terms, conflictual differentiation's necessary result is theocracy; if the state competes with religion for authority and the state wins, the situation automatically becomes that of conflictual integrationism.