Losing support to democracy: Political socialization, popular conceptualizations, and the formation of political grievances among marginalized youth in Tunisia

ABSTRACT

Given incumbent-led autocratization in Tunisia, the article investigates support to democracy among youth in historically marginalized regions and the likelihood they will prefer the authoritarian alternative. Putting forth a framework for micro-level assessment of the cognitive and interpretive dynamics generating loss of popular support to democratic transition, the research problematizes the relationship between political socialization, the conceptualization of democracy, and the formation of political grievances. Drawing on 12 focus group discussions held in six cities in early 2021, the article finds that political learning occurs through observation of unfolding processes via the media/social media in a highly polarized public sphere. As a result, youth understand democracy as the substantive outcome of extended rights, , and judge democracy based on what these extensions produce. The research finds three primary political grievances that are framed as anti-establishment and not as a preference for authoritarianism. Nonetheless, the research also finds that within their conceptualization of democracy are preferences for its limitation in both procedural and substantive dimensions. The article extends the research agenda on support to authoritarian backsliding by demonstrating how modes of political learning shape popular understandings, and assessing the implications of these understanding in terms of authoritarian legitimation.

KEYWORDS:

• Tunisia
• youth
• grievances
• political socialization
• democratic consolidation
• attitudes

Democratic consolidation, fundamental to the durability of emerging democracies, depends not just on the strength of institutions and elite behaviour (Im, 2004; Lavrič & Bieber, 2021; Schedler, 2001) but also the extent to which it is viewed as the only legitimate option by citizens (Chu et al., 2020; Diamond, 1999; Gunther et al., 1995; Linz & Stepan, 1996). In Tunisia’s democratic transition, widespread dissatisfaction resulting from economic collapse, a dysfunctional parliament and paralysed decision-making coalesced in July 2021 with the self-coup by President Kais Saied. One year later, incumbent-led autocratization (Svolik, 2015) was fully concretized with the adoption of a new constitution, marking the end of the country’s parliamentary system and return to nearly unchecked hyper-presidentialism. Combined with increasingly diminished mobilization capacity of political and social forces (Huber & Pisciotta, 2023), society’s capacity for resistance to authoritarian restoration is largely compromised. Importantly, though, the success of Saied’s populist authoritarian project will depend not just on institutional and repressive mechanisms but also his ability to gain popular legitimacy. As Bermeo (2016) argues, authoritarian backsliding through executive rollbacks takes root successfully when majority support is obtained.

One of the key constituents on which Saied hopes to shore up support are youth, who represented the largest portion of his electorate in 2019 (Sigma Conseil, 2019). Saied has branded himself the representative of youth (Mohsen-Finan, 2022), and has targeted young people to legitimize his ‘direct democracy’ proposal (Tamburini, 2022). Yet, sustained support of Tunisian youth for Saied is not guaranteed. The common assumption is that his populist discourse captured youth’s imagination by addressing two of their primary sources of dissatisfaction with the state of politics: corruption (Mansouri, 2022) and elite-capture (Wolf, 2019). As an outsider, he was able to appear above the fray (Brumberg & Ben Salem, 2020) and impermeable to personal and party interests (Marzouki, 2022). Nonetheless, youth participation in the online consultation process and the 2022 constitutional referendum to rubber-stamp Saied’s reforms was exceedingly low (Boukhayatia, 2022).

Moreover, whether Tunisian youth will accept the return to authoritarianism is unclear. On one hand, evidence from the various waves of the Arab Barometer indicate that youth preference for democracy has grown since 2011, even if it performs less well economically or socially (Robbins, 2022). Likewise, polling reveals that youth are optimistic about Tunisia’s democratic future, despite dissatisfaction with the transition (Mansouri, 2022). On the other hand, Albrecht et al. (2023) find that young people are more likely to support authoritarian alternatives to the status quo, including military intervention into politics (Albrecht et al., 2022). To add further complication, youth is not a homogenous category. Vast socio-economic differences, relationships to power and access to resources exist between them, producing differences in political beliefs, values and behaviours. Given this, what is the likelihood Tunisian youth will support Saied and his new system? And if they do, which youth and why?

To answer these questions, the article investigates support to democracy among youth in historically marginalized regions, who represented one of Saied’s primary constituencies (Pogodda, 2021) and yet who remain under-investigated. The research assesses their popular conceptualizations of democracy; how and why they come to hold these understandings; and the implications in terms of loss of support to the democratic transition and the likelihood of popular legitimacy for Saied’s project. Contributing directly to the scholarship exploring the nature and consequences of citizens’ understandings of democracy in developing democratic contexts (Ananda & Bol, 2021; Canache, 2012; Cho, 2014; Lu & Chu, 2021; Mattes & Bratton, 2007), the analysis places emphasis on marginalized youth’s¹ political grievances. While attention has been paid to socio-economic grievances, and particularly the role of unemployment and increasing impoverishment in undermining youth support to the democratic transition, political grievances have been less explored (Sika, 2021). Yet, evidence indicates that political grievances may be more important than socio-economic ones in determining support to democracy (Backeberg & Tholen, 2018).

Deploying a framework drawing on political socialization theory and a rehabilitation of grievance theory, the article theorizes the role of situative political learning in the conceptual understanding of democracy and the formation of political grievances. This framework investigates how the social situatedness of marginalized youth produces forms of political socialization that directly inform understandings and subsequent judgements of democracy. My argument is that how marginalized youth are learning about democracy informs what they understand democracy to be and, in turn, the bases upon which judgements are made and grievances are formed. The article draws on 12 focus group discussions, representing 110 participants, conducted in early 2021 in six different locations.

The research finds that democratic learning among marginalized youth is taking place not via top-down socializing agents but rather via observation of democratic processes and outcomes in the media/social media and limited experiential knowledge. While abstract knowledge of democracy in its procedural dimensions is largely not transmitted, information that was previously hidden from public view is now accessible and highly polarizing positions circulate freely in the public sphere. As a result, marginalized youths’ conceptualization of democracy is concerned less with the procedures and institutions of democratic regimes and more with the substantive outcome of extended political and civil rights and freedoms. In turn, their evaluation of democracy is based primarily on what they see that these extensions are producing in the political and social realms.

The analysis reveals three widely shared political grievances: increased corruption within politics, the moral degradation of Tunisian society, and the lack of representation of youth. Importantly, the research finds that marginalized youth judge their democracy not in comparison with the past but rather in comparison with expectations. As such, they view problems with the democratic transition to be the result not of the system but rather the establishment, and thus understand themselves to support democracy over autocracy. However, the research also finds that within their conceptualization of democracy are preferences for its limitation in both procedural and substantive dimensions, revealing that autocratic proclivities coexist with democratic support.

This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings with regards to popular legitimation of Kais Saied’s autocratic restoration and the longer-term potential for democratic consolidation in Tunisia. The article contributes to the wider literature on democratic consolidation by proposing a theoretical framework that considers not how democratic learning during transition contributes to the acquisition of popular support but rather to its undermining through a conceptual reinvigoration of political grievance. In focusing on the relationship between situative political learning, popular conceptualization of democracy, and judgement of it in theory and practice, the article extends the research agenda on support to authoritarian backsliding in emerging democracies.

Popular support to democracy in transitional contexts

In the absence of pre-existing political socialization, where popular support can in part be explained by a lifetime of interaction with democratic norms and political culture (Neundorf, 2010), how newly emerging democracies achieve legitimacy is a critical field of inquiry in democratization studies and public opinion research. A dominant strand of the literature has focused on performance evaluation (Ekman & Linde, 2005), rooted in a rationalist approach to explaining political preferences. Based on the assumption that intrinsic support to democratic values is limited in transitional contexts, explanations have instead focused on the demonstration of economic and political dividends. While earlier studies on Eastern Europe focused on improved economic conditions for democratic legitimation (Kitschelt, 1992; Przeworski, 1991), these conclusions were later qualified (Fritzsche & Vogler, 2020), with research increasingly focused on perceptions of political performance, the experience of democratic institutions, and outcomes in relation to political goods (Evans & Whitefield, 1995). Bratton and Mattes (2001), for example, find that preference for democracy is rooted in appreciation of freedoms and the experience of political gains, including equality, rights and voting choice. Likewise, Chu et al. (2008) find that overall level of satisfaction with the way democracy works, based on good governance and responsiveness to citizens, are most important in accounting for popular support.

A second dominant strand of the literature places emphasis instead on the relationship between political learning and the adoption of democratic norms and values. Refuting Inglehart’s (1990) socialization theory that political values remain mostly stable over life, this approach considers the democratic transition to be a context of political learning, contributing to habituation and internalization of democratic norms and expectations. Finkel (2003) and Finkel and Smith (2011) argue that transition invokes a continual updating of understanding, knowledge and values, achieved in part through adult civic education. Schmitt-Beck and Voltmer (2007) find that mass media can have a positive effect on promoting a political culture that fosters democratic norms. Meanwhile the importance of schools and pro-democracy curriculum in fashioning support for democracy has been demonstrated across multiple contexts (Mattes, 2012). In addition, direct experiential knowledge of democracy, its institutions and its outcomes have been identified as vectors of enhancing support. Cho (2014) asserts that political learning about democracy occurs both through external socializing agents and through personal experience with democratic governance and procedures, finding a positive relationship between democratic understanding and support for democracy. Likewise, Mattes and Bratton (2007) find that increased cognitive awareness of democracy via processes of political learning increases support of and demand for democracy, even when short-term performance is negative.

Indeed, taken together, this literature coalesces around a cognitive explanation of support for democracy in transitional contexts, finding that more informed understandings lead to more committed support. Yet critical within these findings is the content of understanding: what democracy is understood to mean influences the degree of support, with further implications in terms of political behaviours, preferences and regime stability. Canache (2012) argues that variations in how citizens conceptualize democracy may have effects on the stability of democratic governance, finding that less liberal conceptualizations are linked to lower support for democracy. Likewise, Baviskar and Malone (2004) find that citizens who harbour a more procedural understanding of democracy are more likely to support it even in the face of shortcomings whereas those who associate democracy with both procedures and outcomes are more likely to consider authoritarian alternatives.

This study seeks to contribute to this literature by putting forth a framework for micro-level assessment of political learning and support to democracy by problematizing the relationship between political socialization, the conceptualization of democracy, and evaluation. Here, the emphasis is not on how support for democracy is generated but rather on how processes of political learning contribute to loss of support through grievance formation. By focusing on how modes of political learning shape popular understandings of democracy as well as the consequences of these understandings in terms of political grievance formation, this study sheds light on the cognitive and interpretive dynamics generating loss of popular support to democratic transition.

Theorizing the role of learning in political grievance formation

While no standard definition exists, political grievances are usually conceived in relation to injustice or violence as wielded by elites or the state. This includes exclusion from civic or political life (Henshaw, 2016), practices of repression (Collier & Hoeffler, 2004), various forms of corruption (Ballentine & Sherman, 2003), or lack of representation in the political system (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2008). Political grievances can also be understood as the subjective experience of unsatisfactory or declining conditions (Snow et al., 2005), or sudden threats to rights or circumstances (Walsh, 1981). Within the broader framework of social justice theory, political grievances are also understood as perceived unfairness in outcomes or unfairness in the procedures for distribution (Klandermans et al., 2001). Here, the endeavour is to investigate in-depth the content of political grievances by delving into the processes underscoring their formation.

Grievance formation theory has been dominated over the last three decades by the literature on collective action frames (Mueller, 1992), mostly supplanting earlier approaches of relative deprivation. Yet, relative deprivation theories (Buechler, 2004; Davies, 1962; Gurney & Tierney, 1982; Useem, 1998) can be instructive to understanding how a context of transition is conducive to grievance formation. Relative deprivation posits that grievances are formed through processes of comparison upon which outcomes are then evaluated. Such comparisons can occur along different dimensions: comparisons between groups, comparisons over time, or comparisons between expectations and perceived reality (Gurr, 1970). Democratic transitions prove particularly relevant for exploring these processes precisely because they provide the context for comparing a past political system with the present, and comparing expectations for democracy with the gap in attainment. I posit that the bases upon which these comparisons and in turn evaluations are being made are directly related to how democracy is being learned. Put more simply, how people are learning about democracy informs what they are learning about democracy and, in turn, the points of reference for comparative and evaluative processes.

Theories of political socialization indicate the vectors for learning about democracy under transition and the types of knowledge that are being transmitted. Formal and top-down socializing agents, such as schools and civic education programs, generally transmit understanding of how government works in practice and a broad knowledge of democratic values. Such top-down vectors contribute to the development of cognitive awareness (Mattes & Bratton, 2007) and enhanced analytical capacity (Nie et al., 1996) of democratic procedures, institutions and norms. Top-down learning also promotes shared beliefs and collective narratives about the past and present. While this can promote hegemonic myths that reinforce elite interests (Brand, 2014), it can also provide collective interpreting schemes and build pride in the transition process as a shared endeavour (Rozen, 2015).

Yet, in contexts of transition, traditional socializing agents are often weak precisely because institutions are still in flux; given this, other vectors may play larger roles. The mass media has been found to fill gaps (Schmitt-Beck & Voltmer, 2007), providing information regarding the new system in place, how it functions and its major players. In broadcasting elite-level narratives alongside popular debates, the mass media also plays a vital role in building a public sphere infused with democratic discourse and political content, and in making political outcomes known. More recently, social media has emerged as a vector for political learning, permitting passive and unintentional reception of information (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2017) and allowing users to take active roles through citizen journalism or monitoring (Karolak, 2020). Social media also acts as a space for informal political discussion (Wojcieszak & Mutz, 2009), a critical means by which citizens learn about new institutions and how they function (Finkel & Smith, 2011).

This points to the other major forms of social learning of democracy, and namely direct experiences and social interactions. Personal experiential knowledge, acquired from participating in formal procedures such as voting or through interactions with institutions, can strongly shape understanding of how a new system works in practice. Likewise, interactions with civil society and the enactment of participation and decision-making can support the diffusion and internalization of democratic values (Gibson, 2001). As Kiess (2022) argues, experiential learning is among the most effective means for transmitting knowledge of democracy, precisely because it combines tacit understanding with social exchange based on affective bonds linked to shared democratic principles.

Method and materials

The analysis is broken down in two parts. First, the research investigates how youth have been learning about their democracy and the implications of their political socialization patterns in their conceptual understanding of democracy. Second, the analysis explores how this understanding informs the types of comparisons they make and the basis on which they judge democracy. Specific attention is paid to the nature of comparisons and whether they reveal anti-system or anti-establishment sentiments.

The motivation to focus specifically on youth from marginalized regions is twofold. First, I put forth a problematization of marginalized youth as a situative phenomenon that informs the dynamics of grievance formation. Drawing on a Mannheimian (1952) approach, I understand youth not as age category but rather as a socially-situated construction characterized by shared location in a historical-social reality and endowed with their own range of experiences and socialization patterns. Further, I acknowledge that marginalized youth are socially, politically and economically differentiated as a result of regional disparities between the wealthier northeastern coastal region and the long-excluded hinterlands. Acknowledging the historical-social location of marginalized youth provides a lens for assessing the particularities of their political socialization and how this informs popular understanding of democracy.

Second, focusing the empirical analysis on youth from marginalized regions fills a gap in the literature. While studies have explored Tunisian youth political socialization into democracy (Ben Mami & Gobe, 2021), and trends in their political participation and engagement (Desrues & Gobe, 2021; Saidani, 2022), these have either focused on youth in the capital or from privileged socio-economic backgrounds, or youth writ large. By focusing on marginalized youth, this study not only considers an under-investigated group but also places their specific historical-social location as a distinctive set of social processes that inform their political attitudes and evaluations.

The research draws on 12 focus group discussions, representing 110 participants total, conducted in six cities representing Tunisia’s underdeveloped regions: Chebika, Foussana, Hajib Laayoune, Kairouan, Kasserine and Mejez el Beb.² The selection of cities and the recruitment of participants was conducted in collaboration with two local associations who work with youth. The six cities selected capture a range of sizes, geographic locations, and urban/rural settings and the governorates in which they are located have seen repeated social mobilization over lack of progress in reducing regional disparities. In this way, they were deemed representative and comparable in terms of the broader sociopolitical environment.

With regards to recruitment, a small number were selected from the directories of the local associations. Those selectees were then asked to invite others from their networks to join the focus groups. While acknowledging certain selection bias, this method was privileged to build trust and ensure open discussion. The final selection of participants was made to capture two theoretically-driven assumptions. First, the composition of each group ensured gender parity and represented a range of education levels (basic high school to university) and employment levels (unemployed, informal employment, formal employment) based on the expectation that those with lower education levels and/or those unemployed would be less likely to support democracy. Second, focus groups were composed in two age-related sub-groups: those 18–26 years old (who would have been minors during the 2011 revolution) and those 27–35 years old (who would have been young adults at the time of the revolution), with one each per city. This was based on the assumption that political socialization would be different between these sub-groups, with those in the former learning about democracy from traditional socializing agents and notably the public school system. This composition of the focus groups was similar in the six cities.

The focus groups were designed to stimulate debate between participants and reveal socially-shared perspectives and experiences as well as points of consensus and disagreement. Focus groups took place from January-March 2021 and were conducted in Tunisian Arabic by two research collaborators. Transcripts were then coded in a three-stage process. Deductively, the transcripts were first coded to identify vectors of political learning and the types of comparisons being made. Inductively, the transcripts were then coded to identify the understandings of democracy and to identify the range of political grievances. In a third stage, the codes were then cross-referenced with the profiles of participants to assess whether similarities/differences could be identified with regards to education level, employment status, gender, age, and/or location.

Political learning and the outsized role of media/social media

For research participants, learning about democracy is taking place primarily through the media/social media, and to a more limited extent through direct and indirect experiential knowledge. These findings are consistent across the discussions and defy expectations. It was assumed that instruction in civics and history would be different between participants, given that the older cohort underwent public schooling under the Ben Ali regime and the younger cohort experienced their middle and high school years during and after the democratic transition. This unexpected similarity reveals how dynamics of the transition shaped shared socialization processes.

The relatively unimportant role of formal education in transmitting knowledge of Tunisia’s democracy is derivative of larger priorities in the wider process of transition. In the aftermath of the near-collapse of the democratic experiment in 2013, Tunisia’s governance model veered into consensus-based politics enshrined in a pacted settlement among a broad coalition of elites. This model, which promoted stability and reduced polarization through establishing national unity as the basis for policy-making, meant that painful economic and social reforms were postponed in favour of smaller-scale technocratic political bargains (McCarthy, 2019). This translated to a decision by the Ministry of Education to not update the school curriculum to reflect the 2011 revolution and Tunisia’s democratic transition, as this would require establishing an agreed upon national narrative. As a result, the curriculum has not changed since 2002, meaning that students are receiving the same civics education as under the Ben Ali regime (Rozen, 2015). Meanwhile, individual teachers provide instruction on the revolution and post-revolutionary period as they see fit (Saidi, 2019).

In addition, the role of Tunisia’s post-2011 civil society sector in contributing to democratic learning among youth has been limited in the country’s interior regions. Whereas interaction and direct participation with associations has been shown to contribute to instilling democratic culture and faith in institutions among youth in the country’s northeastern coastal area and the capital (Desrues & Velasco Arranz, 2021), opportunities for political learning via these vectors are vanishingly limited in rural and underdeveloped zones (Drissi, 2014). This reflects the geographic consolidation of the civil society sector around Tunis and the predominance of the multilingual, well-educated young people in its ranks. Among focus group participants, only a limited number state to have learned about democracy via engagement with civil society, as well as via the activities organized at the maisons des jeunes.

Instead, for the vast majority of research participants, information regarding Tunisia’s democratization process is primarily gleaned from observations and engagements with the media and social media. Since the revolution, Tunisia’s mediascape has undergone an important process of diversification, including an expansion in the number of TV channels, print media and electronic journals, and the politicization of programming and editorial lines (Voltmer et al., 2021). Alongside this has been increased access to social media platforms and content previously eclipsed, with Facebook emerging as a widely used source of political news and information by youth (Aal et al., 2018). The traditional and social media have paid vast attention to politics from above and below, as well as being platforms for the diffusion of political agendas and forums for political exchange and digital activism. This has led to a significant transformation of the public sphere, marked by the injection of political content, discourse and debate along with visibility of contestation and oppositional views (Antonakis-Nashif, 2016). It has also, though, led to the unveiling of previously censored realities, including details of corruption and inequalities, and political and social discord. Continual commentary expressing polarized views has been further partitioned into distinct circles with their own partisan publics. As Lynch (2019) and Karolak (2020) argue, media/social media have contributed to fostering social division, uncertainty and frustration with the transition. As the primary vector for political learning, observations and engagement with the media/social media have provided a context for what Zakhour (2020) names an epistemological crisis of destabilized political imaginaries. This crisis is marked by amplified frustration and sense of insecurity resulting from the revelation of previously ‘hidden transcripts’ (Zakhour, 2020) and how these are experienced in the everyday. For marginalized youth, the problematic nature of media/social media does not go unnoticed: across the focus groups, participants repeatedly relay their lack of trust in the bombastic nature of political coverage. Complementing this, marginalized youth also learn about democracy through direct and indirect personal experience. This includes voting or, in the case of abstention, testimonials from others, and interactions specifically with municipalities and local authorities.

Conceptualizing democracy in terms of substantive outcomes

Popular conceptualizations of democracy have important implications for regime stability and the durability of institutions in contexts of transition (Lu & Chu, 2021). While procedural understandings of democracy, related to the processes and institutions of democratic governance including the primacy of elections (Dahl, 1971; Przeworski, 1999), are considered the most important for democratic stability, these are not necessarily the most commonly held. Indeed, in emerging democracies, Dalton et al. (2007) find that democracy is most commonly equated with substantive outcomes and in particular the freedoms, liberties and rights that it provides. Further, as Zuern (2009) shows, substantive conceptualizations of democracy are themselves the product of historical trajectories and local struggles and can vary between emphasis on social and economic rights to political rights and equality before the law.

For the youth interviewed here, a conceptualization of democracy in terms of substantive outcomes, and in particular the extension of political rights and civil liberties, is the most prevalent, cutting across the profiles of research participants. In the absence of top-down socialization, the majority of those interviewed have a limited sense of the procedural dimensions of democracy. To this point, they admit to poor understanding of democratic political institutions or policy-making processes. That being said, those with university degrees do have stronger procedural conceptualizations of democracy, including an emphasis on an independent judiciary and rule of law. Nonetheless, the majority of research participants’ procedural notion of democracy is limited to voting and the principle of citizen selection of representatives as per their direct and indirect personal experiences.

Instead, given that learning is based primarily on observation of unfolding processes in an atmosphere of polarization and destabilized political and social relationships, they understand democracy as concerned with the substantive outcomes of political rights and personal freedoms and liberties. This includes the right to participate and the right to decision-making, the right to voice opinions and express opposition or discontent, and protection from state abuses. Interestingly, and contrary to expectations among a population that has faced historic socio-economic exclusion, this substantive conceptualization only rarely included improved social benefits or economic gains. Indeed, when asked specifically what they believe democracy looks like in practice, only the younger cohort in Kairouan spoke about the link between an improved economy and a functioning democracy. Moreover, while the notion of social justice was cited as a dimension of democracy in numerous focus groups, this substantive outcome – one of the main demands of the 2011 revolution – failed to elicit any sustained discussion or consensus among participants.

This conceptualization has important implications for how marginalized youth judge democracy. In understanding democracy as the extension of political rights and freedoms, their evaluation of the political system is in turn based primarily on what they observe democracy is producing. Put otherwise, their evaluation of democracy is based on the broader trends in the political sphere and society at large that they assess to be the products of the extension of political rights and freedoms.

Corruption, moral degradation and lack of representation as the negative products of democracy

Across the focus groups, the three political grievances that emerge from the discussions repeatedly and nearly unanimously are widespread corruption within the political arena; the moral degradation of Tunisian society more broadly; and the lack of representation of youth in politics, corresponding with findings in quantitative surveys and qualitative studies (Soulimi, 2023). What is added here, though, is an explicit understanding of how young people associate the process of democratic transition with the production of these political and social ails.

Grievance with corruption spans across a diverse set of institutions and actors, including the parliament, political parties and elites, and is largely based on what the uncensored media has exposed. What is new here, though, is the extension of this grievance to the municipalities, with whom they have direct interactions and the greatest experiential knowledge. They characterize their experiences of the municipalities by the proliferation of corruption. Indeed, it is not just that corruption has continued despite the democratic transition; rather, it is that the extension of political participation through the decentralization process has resulted in its multiplication. An exchange between participants in the older cohort focus group in Chebika exemplifies this:

Respondent 1: The municipality is a source of corruption, it’s there for them to get rich. 90 per cent of people who ran for office are there to enrich themselves and do trafficking. They are not there to work for Chebika or the residents.

Respondent 2: The municipality is a bacteria. Whoever becomes mayor is from the area. Any funding, any initiative is immediately diverted. We don’t see anything. Corruption.

Respondent 3: The Chebika municipal council is a miniature image of the parliament … They’ve been getting nowhere for two years.

Such sentiments are echoed repeatedly in other focus groups, where municipalities are seen as particularly propitious for nepotism and advancing personal interests. In their collective interpretation, corruption has filtered down to all levels and its practice has been extended as new institutions and players have been incorporated into the political system.

Moreover, this assessment of increased corruption is not limited to formal political players. Numerous research participants revealed an equal degree of distrust of civil society organizations and syndicates. This in part reflects their own stated lack of knowledge of what such bodies do and the role they play in Tunisia’s post-2011 order. Given exceedingly low rates of youth civic engagement in underdeveloped regions (Drissi, 2014), awareness of civil society, social movement activities and unions is based almost entirely on information gleaned from media sources, where coverage of protests and campaigns contributes to an overall image of social division. The assumption among many interviewed here is that alternative bodies are likely arms of political parties or beholden to special interests, and that their activities seek to enhance the status of their partisans to the detriment of society at large. The exception are those who are directly engaged with civil society organizations or syndicates, who claim a high degree of trust in these bodies and see their value as part of democracy. These divergent evaluations resulting from different political socialization processes contribute to the broader understanding of the role of civil society (Bishara, 2020; Hudáková, 2021) in democratic consolidation in Tunisia and how they contribute to democratization from below.

A second major political grievance consistent across the focus groups is the moral degradation of Tunisian social and political life produced by the democratic transition. Citing rows between parliamentarians and disrespectful commentaries made in the media, they speak with disgust of the lack of civility within the political sphere. As one respondent from the Hajib Laayoune older cohort states, ‘Parliament is shameful. Watch TV, there is lack of respect’. More gravely, they identify how this has permeated Tunisian society, infusing the public sphere with the same disrespectful social interactions that are on display in the political realm. As one participant from the Kasserine younger cohort claims, ‘freedom of speech has become a lack of respect and courtesy’.

Alongside this, participants across the focus groups repeatedly discuss the decline of traditional morals in Tunisia, and the need to reinject politics and social life with morality and values. Indeed, the term morality (akhla9eya) comes up repeatedly across all focus groups, as this exchange within the Foussana older cohort depicts:

Respondent 1: There is no morality, no patriotism.

Respondent 2: We need principles, and there is no choice. Islamic, and not Western. They kill millions.

Respondent 3: Values? We are a society that has no values. We have no manners.

As further evidence, they cite abundant lying and hypocrisy on the part of political elites who do not fulfil promises. But importantly, they also cite protests in favour of LGBTQ+ rights or the legalization of marijuana, which they identify as indecent comportments of youth in the capital. In their shared interpretation, the extension of freedoms and civil liberties has produced a generalized moral decline. As one participant from the Chebika older cohort explains, ‘liberty has been misunderstood’.

It is worth pointing out that this call for the re-moralization of the political and public sphere is not equated with a preference for Islamist rule. On the contrary, across the focus groups, participants speak with ire of the Islamist party Ennahda and are wary of politicizing religion. Instead, their position is that traditional morality and values must be infused at the individual level. As one participant from the Kasserine older cohort explains,

I am called an infidel, a communist, an atheist even though I am not and I pray… We must distinguish between religion and politics when we talk about rights and freedom, there is a red line.

The third major political grievance that can be identified across the focus groups is the lack of representation of young people in the new democratic order. What they observe is that the transition has led to a broad incorporation of older generations into the political system and a reshuffling of traditional political elites. This trend of horizontal inclusion has come in the absence of vertical intergenerational inclusion. Importantly, this lack of representation does not simply pertain to youth participation in decision-making roles and elected positions. Rather, there is a larger sense of lack of representation of youth’s modes of being and thinking in the new political order. Across all focus groups, participants speak of the generational differences they perceive and the need for generational replacement to improve the democratic transition. As one research participant from the Chebika younger cohort states, ‘We take the young people here and put them in parliament. All politicians are at least 50 years old. We should involve young people. The role of young people in political life. Renewal with the new generation’. Reinforced by the partitioning of publics through media consumption patterns, marginalized youth proclaim their generational otherness and the lack of reflection of their identities in the political realm. Their experience is one of reproduced exclusion at the generational level, referring to themselves as the ‘sacrificed generation’.

What support to authoritarian alternatives?

Despite these political grievances, the discussions and debates throughout the focus groups reveal that the majority of participants feel themselves to prefer democracy over autocracy. Their primary conceptualization of democracy – the constellation of freedoms, liberties, and political rights that they see as the substantive outcome of the transition – is viewed as primordial and the baseline of political legitimacy. Indeed, when they explicitly compare the Ben Ali regime to their current system, the only grievance that emerges consistently across the different focus groups is insecurity. For many, the product of extended liberties and protections is rising crime rates and terrorism, and for some – and notably some female research participants – this reduction in personal security leads to a preference for the previous system.³ Yet, this is not consistent across the discussions. On the contrary, the issue of rising insecurity provoked vivid debates, with many arguing that the open media is simply unveiling pre-existing trends that had been obscured under authoritarian censorship, as exemplified in this exchange between participants from the Chebika younger cohort:

Respondent 1: What was bad before was the dictatorship, the repression. There was no sharing of power. But I preferred it because I felt secure. Maybe there was terrorism before, but we didn’t know about it, it wasn’t visible. Now everything is before us, and we are no longer living in security.

Respondent 2: There were crimes before but we didn’t know it. There wasn’t security before. It’s a lie. It’s just that today the media talks about it, that’s all.

Perhaps more importantly, even if many judge insecurity to be a negative product of democracy, they nonetheless view the protection from state abuse as outweighing the cost. This is especially true for those in the older cohort who have a much clearer memory of the Ben Ali regime. To this point, while the research found no notable differences in terms of popular conceptualization of democracy between the two sub-groups of youth, the self-stated understanding of the past differed markedly, with those in the older cohort much more critical of the Ben Ali era.

In addition, the formation of these grievances did not involve a comparison between the past and the present but rather the gap between expectations and attainment. In this sense, their political grievances are framed as anti-establishment. In their own interpretation, the problem is not democracy per se but rather how liberties and freedoms have been misunderstood and misused. The problem, as they see it, is with the elected officials, who are judged as not only corrupt but also incompetent and generally unsuited to the job, but also the electorate, whom they see as making the ‘wrong choices’. To this point, and across all discussions, the term ‘awareness’ (wa3i) comes up repeatedly as a missing ingredient to a well-functioning democracy in Tunisia. Their belief, expressed across the focus groups, is that over time and through increased awareness and understanding of the democratic system, the state of politics will improve. This underscores their consistent sense of optimism for the future of democracy in Tunisia.

Yet, though they support democracy in so much as they value the individual extension of rights and freedoms, the criticisms of the procedural dimensions of their system and the misgivings with equal rights and freedom of expression to certain minority groups unveil certain anti-system currents. While focus group participants readily criticize the Ben Ali regime for its total control over institutions and power, they also criticize their parliamentary system and advocate for much more restricted decision-making authority. Participants speak about the repeated change in hands of ministerial positions, the excessive number of political parties and the collective jostling among elites to have a say – all while the country sinks ever deeper into crisis. They contrast this with a hypothetical presidential system, viewing the latter as more efficient in its ability to impose decisive action, as in this exchange between participants in the Chebika older cohort:

Respondent 1: We must get rid of the parliamentary regime. A presidential regime is better. People know better now … the parliament is too heterogeneous.

Respondent 2: The parliamentary regime must go. A boat can only have one captain, the others can be in the opposition.

Indeed, dissatisfaction with the parliamentary regime is expressed in all focus groups and across all different profiles of participants. And while only a few go as far as to say that they outright prefer dictatorship (claiming it is more ‘compatible’ with Tunisian culture), and the majority claim to still want a democracy but with a much stronger executive, the notion of greatly limiting decision-making access is consistent across the discussions. Moreover, their judgement of the parliament calls into question the extent to which they are willing to accept electoral processes that result in undesirable outcomes. Throughout the discussions, the legitimacy of the parliament and the municipalities is repeatedly called into question given their poor estimation of representatives. And for many, it is the electoral process itself that is a part of the problem. Believing that the electorate does not have the knowledge necessary to make good choices, and that political parties and elites are interested in personal gain over the public good, faith in elections – even if perceived as fair – is doubted. As one research participant from the Mejez el Beb older cohort group states,

Politics in Tunisia, today, from what we see on the media, it’s a catastrophic situation… If we only had 90 seats in parliament, that would be better. What is democracy going to give us? It’s just electoral rubbish.

It should be stated that this lack of faith in the electoral process as a result of poorly judged outcomes is not universally shared by all research participants; some are quite proud of their electoral system and see elections as the cornerstone of democracy. Nonetheless, the tendency to judge the value of elections on their outcomes, and to in turn be dismissive of institutional legitimacy as a result, underlies a lack of support for the procedural dimensions of democracy.

Likewise, while the vast majority of those interviewed here claim to support democracy because of the extension of political rights and freedoms, they nonetheless call for its limitation. The following exchange between participants of the Chebika younger cohort is revelatory:

Respondent 1: We practice democracy, we can talk, we can do what we want, not like before. Before it was only one direction possible, now we get to choose.

Respondent 2: The problem is that we don’t understand democracy. We are still searching for the limits of democracy.

Respondent 3: You are talking about liberty?

Respondent 2: I am talking about democracy. We talk about it now, but we don’t understand anything. We don’t understand participation.

These calls for limiting democracy that come up throughout the focus group discussions – how many parties should exist, how many people should have decision-making authority, who should be allowed to access government positions, who should have full and equal rights, how freedom of speech and assembly should be exercised – belie a limited support to democracy in its full procedural and substantive meaning (Morlino, 2004.) This matters, as it has implications for Kais Saied’s ability to achieve popular legitimacy but also for the ability to ensure regime stability in a future democratic scenario.

Considering Saied’s actions, several of his moves do respond directly to marginalized youth’s political grievances. His persecution of the political class and opponents under the façade of cracking down on corruption, and his injection of conservative language and discourse into the 2022 constitution and the public sphere (Chomiak, 2019), both respond to primary political grievances as identified here and could be viewed as correcting some of the excesses produced by the democratic transition. And, given the outsized role of media/social media in their assessment of political processes, a return to censorship and the closure of the public sphere could have a real impact on how they evaluate Saied’s project. Yet, their third major grievance, the lack of representation of youth, is likely to be aggravated by Saied’s institutional reforms and notably the repealing of the youth quota system (Belschner, 2021).

Perhaps more importantly, given that the extension of political rights and protection from state abuse are viewed as the basis of political legitimacy among the young people researched here, the rising levels of repression – including against marginalized youth⁴ – will likely undermine his ability to garner popular support. Moreover, the provision of improved economic conditions would not alone suffice to secure popular support among marginalized youth: participants repeatedly state across the focus groups that socio-economic improvement is not a sufficient bar to render Tunisia’s democracy functional, even among those in the most precarious situations. Nonetheless, Saied has thus far been able to dismantle Tunisia’s democratic institutions with virtually no popular dissent by marginalized youth, indicating that democratic consolidation has likely not fully occurred.

More broadly, this limited popular conceptualization of democracy points to broader challenges in building a stable democratic regime in Tunisia. First, without a strong procedural notion of democracy, the youth interviewed place emphasis on substantive outcomes over institutions and processes, which fuels widespread anti-establishment grievances but also opens the door for authoritarian backsliding as the institutional features of a democratic system are not considered fundamental. This demonstrates how authoritarian restoration could be popularly legitimized despite stated preference for democracy (see also Ridge, 2022). Second, the specific vectors of political socialization during the decade of transition, alongside the failure to put forth a shared narrative of the 2011 revolution, could act as obstacles to garnering popular support for democracy in a future scenario. In the absence of a strong understanding of the Ben Ali regime, especially among the younger sub-group, and with a shared interpretation of the transition as chaotic and dysfunctional, popular enthusiasm for a future process of democratization may be difficult to secure. To be clear, this is not to say that Tunisian youth in marginalized regions prefer autocracy but rather that the guaranteeing of democratic institutions and procedures, and of full and equal political rights and liberties to all members of society, are not necessarily viewed as requirements for Tunisian democracy. Thus, while they see themselves as supporters of democracy within their own framework of understanding, and while they value and even insist upon their political rights and freedoms, their popular conceptualization nonetheless leaves simultaneous space for support to authoritarian alternatives.

Conclusion

In considering how learning about democracy under transition informs political grievance formation, this article has shed light on the cognitive and interpretive processes that inform marginalized youth’s dissatisfaction with the post-2011 order. The article has shown how specific institutional and reform choices made regarding Tunisia’s transition, alongside socially situated political learning, informs marginalized youth’s conceptualization of democracy in terms of substantive outcomes. These findings make a contribution to the existing literature investigating support to Tunisian democracy and extend the assessment of reasons for youth dissatisfaction by looking beyond socio-economic grievances. Perhaps most importantly, this study has shown that, for marginalized youth, the crux of their political grievances is not based on a preference for authoritarianism but rather the perception of temporally understood negative products of democracy’s extension of rights and freedoms. Nonetheless, the study has also unpacked the broader implications of their conceptualization of democracy, and in particular how a notion of democracy as needing limitations in procedural and substantive terms creates possibilities for support to authoritarian alternatives.

Finally, for scholars of democratic transitions and consolidation/deconsolidation, the article shows how socially situated learning and political socialization dynamics inform the cognitive micro-foundations for loss of support for democracy. In contributing an analytical framework to assess how socialization, popular conceptualization and grievances connect, the study provides new avenues for investigating how authoritarian backsliding can gain popular legitimacy in new democracies.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Malek Lakhal and Zied Boussen for research collaboration and for fruitful exchanges regarding the findings, and the two local associations for assistance with fieldwork in Tunisia. The author would also like to thank the two external reviewers for insightful comments and suggestions that significantly helped refine the analytical framework and improve the overall argument of the paper and its contribution.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Strategic Research Area: The Middle East in the Contemporary World (MECW) at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden; and by the Arab Reform Initiative under the project 'Promoting Youth Participation in Democratic Consolidation in Tunisia.'

Notes

1. The term ‘marginalized youth’ refers to young people from historically marginalized regions.

2. Informed consent was systematically obtained according to the principles of the Belmont Report. Ethical approval for interviews was not required as per exemptions at Lund University; however, data management follows the guidelines as stipulated by the Data Management Plan Roadmap at Lund University.

3. This finding is echoed in research elsewhere indicating that insecurity is a major reason for lack of support to democratic governance in Tunisia. See Benstead (2015).

4. Research participants have reported facing increased police abuse and harassment in 2023.