In response to the 2011 Tunisian elections and the uncertainty surrounding Tunisia’s future, we offer an empirical explanation of the election’s results using socioeconomic and demographic variables. We aggregate many political analyses to describe the main parties and give insights into their strengths and weaknesses. We also examine common misconceptions advanced during the elections. Finally, we include a proposed electoral map that could be used by politicians to plan their future political strategies.
Tunisian Elections regulation has experienced a deep modification. Between the Electoral regulation before the regime change of January 2011 and after: the difference is huge. And between the elections regulation of 2011 and of 2014 the difference is important too. The institutions involved in rule making and/or regulation have been always in a daily interaction with all their institutional environment components. These components managed to make a huge difference and mark a fingerprint in the shaping of electoral regulation outcome. This interaction is very obvious and clear at a first glance. During all the years ranging from the first elections of 1956 until the elections of 2009, the competent regulatory authority of elections was the Ministry of interior, while the parliament was the law maker with one super party majority. Civil society was repressed and associations and political parties were harassed during their creation and function. This opened the gate for easy manipulation, fraud and a biased treatment among voters and candidates. However, during the transition (2011-2014), there was a sudden shift and elections became regulated through an independent regulatory agency called the ISIE (instance superieure independente des elections), and we witnessed an active role of a variety of participants in the regulation of this matter: civil society, courts, government, national constituent assembly, National dialogue, army, international institutions… During the same period civil society was free to establish and function; media became liberalized and no more pressure on speech and press. The “New” Tunisia promised legitimacy by promoting what was labeled “Goals of the Revolution”, as an example just in the first piece of electoral legislation during the transition and the subsequent ones, elections became not just a mere procedure of pooling, but many values were added besides of the procedures, mainly: transparency, honesty, accuracy, democracy. So how were electoral rules and principles been adopted in Tunisia? We will try to find the answer beyond the mere apparent ordinary interaction between deputies and political parties inside the parliament, assemblies and other official bodies. To answer this question, we thought about dividing our paper into two parts, where a general part deals with mapping the electoral scene, identifying the major rule, procedures, and innovations and also identifying the most important players and the roles of each one of them, and the possible points of interaction. And then in a second part we will deal with concrete examples of interactions like the adoption of “Principe de Parité” and the schedule of elections among other points.
Gulf oil monarchies (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates – UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait) are facing big challenges after two major events took place in recent years: oil price plunge and the events derived from the Arab Spring. Combined amplitude of the oil price drop and the aftermath of the Arab Spring, is big enough for ruling elites to recognize the necessity of political relegitimation. Oil rent occurs as a main source of government income appearing as crucial fundament for ensuring political stability and keeping the social rest. Arab Spring additionally increased the threat to the oil monarchies. This article argues that contemporary electoral process in Gulf oil monarchies plays the role of limited re-legitimizing mechanism for the regimes confronted by their citizens after the Arab Spring and the drop of the oil prices.
From late 2010 through 2011, popular uprisings toppled authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. In each country, a key component of the new regime’s “founding moment” was the selection of rules for the first democratically elected assembly. This paper asks how the design of electoral systems affected the outcomes of the founding elections. We are interested in whether the rules of competition were consequential in determining winners and losers, and to the quality and trajectory of democratization. Our conclusions are based on analysis of district level results from the list proportional representation component of each election and on first person interviews with actors in who participated in the design of electoral rules.