Hicham Alaoui is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. A member of the Moroccan royal family – he is the first cousin of King Mohammed VI – he publishes Islam and democracy. How to change the face of the Arab world (Le Cherche-Midi, 528 pages, 22.50 euros), an essay on the contrasting trajectories of democratization in the Arab-Muslim area. He had already signed, in 2014, Diary of a Banished Prince (Grasset).
You studied the Egyptian and Tunisian cases in the context of the Arab revolutions of 2011. Were these experiences a failure?
To succeed, a transition to democracy must be the subject of a pact between rival political forces. THE pacting is one of the ways to get out of the blockage that generally follows the breakdown of the authoritarian order. The forms it takes can explain the difference in national trajectories, between Egypt and Tunisia for example.
In the Egyptian case, the failure is almost structural: there was a blockage due to polarization between Islamists and secularists, which is a prerequisite for reaching a compromise, but there was no parity, the Islamists being much stronger than the secularists. The army also played the role of spoilsport.
In the Tunisian case, initially, we could think that the pacting had succeeded, thanks to the government agreement sealed in 2015 between the Nidaa Tounès (modernist) and Ennahda (Islamist) parties. But President Kaïs Saïed's coup in 2021 forced Tunisia to return to authoritarianism. If there was a failure, it was not that of transition, but that of political transformation. Ennahda knew how to adapt to the demands of modernity. On the other hand, the political class as a whole froze the transition in very incestuous arrangements – like those between Nidaa Tounès and Ennahda – which caused a divorce between the population and the elites. We haven't really returned to daddy authoritarianism. We have instead diverged towards authoritarianism 2.0, which is populism. However, populism is not the denial of democracy, but its capture. This is also proof that the transition was successful.
Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers Tunisia, cradle of the “Arab Spring”, gives in to the sirens of the strongman
Read later
Transitions are not an ideal in themselves, but they are essential. This will be the case, including in Egypt. The Egyptians will understand that the army has no economic solution to their problems, and the Islamist opposition will admit that getting along with the secularists is the best solution to confining the military to barracks. Secularists will understand that running behind the military to protect themselves from Islamism is not a solution either. Everyone will have to get along.
You have 77.36% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
