In the aftermath of Kais Saied’s seizure of power, international commentators readily turned to Egypt as a comparable post- Arab Spring democracy overturned. In doing so, they reveal some of the limitations with how analysts engage the Maghreb as a region.
Uncertainty in the weeks following Saied’s July 25th power-grab filled with comparisons to President Fatah al-Sisi’s coup in Egypt.
Was Tunisia destined for the same fate? What lessons were to be learnt from it?
Differences, while recognised, did little to dispense of the comparison or to look elsewhere. Indeed, while the emergence of Egypt as a point of reference for understanding Tunisia appeared as natural as it was ubiquitous, the rationale behind it has gone largely unchallenged.
But how comparable are the two?
Likeness with an ‘Arab state’ whose short-lived democracy was produced by the same forces that birthed Tunisia’s is compelling to many. But differences between the two are difficult to ignore.
Tunisia and Egypt have vastly different histories, cultures, and speak dialects of Arabic that are barely mutually intelligible. Tunisia’s population is roughly a tenth of Egypt’s, its land mass a seventh. Over a thousand miles separate Tunis from Cairo, the two operating in connected but distinct geopolitical environments.
Nor is the ‘Arab state’ a particularly incisive framework of analysis. Similarities between Middle East and North African states are neither exclusive to the region nor do they betray a shared Arab essence. Behind the supposed uniformity of Arab states lies a heterogeneity in which historically non-democratic states operate and have formed. Where in Egypt state power has long been entangled in its military, in Tunisia this is far less the case.
The ‘Arab state’ should be understood more as a marker through which regional states identify themselves, than as a sociological truth.
So, what makes a good comparison? And what is the point of making them?
Tunisia and Benin: Model democracies gone awry
Equidistant to Tunisia, Benin presents an alternative comparison. Unlike Egypt, Benin also has a history of established democracy which, as in Tunisia, has undergone a rapid decline. Comparably sized and populated, the West African nation was too considered a poster-boy of democracy, having kick-started a wave of democratisation movements across Africa in the 1990s. The country shares in the experience of French colonialism, shaping significantly its state structure, post-independence elites and political culture.
What Benin offers is insight into how democracy can be dismantled piece-by-piece within an established democratic framework. Rather than through military coup, Benin’s elected president has edged the country towards autocracy by systematically penetrating the institutional architecture entrusted with checks and balances on executive power. He has done so less by evoking national security or sinister foreign plot, but by exploiting popular dissatisfaction with elements of the country’s democratic system that have lent it to political paralysis and corruption.
In this sense both Benin and Tunisia can be located within a new trend of African autocrats whose ascent to power comes through populist politics exercised within a democratic format. While Tunisia’s path is yet uncertain, Benin offers a model for how democracy can be overturned in more subtle but no less effective fashion, exploiting its profile as a small country on the peripheries of Western interests. A genuine crisis of democracy acts as cover for these acts; the similarities with Saied’ s approach are striking.
It also shows up the limitations of a media and foreign policy conversation that locate the Maghreb as a backdoor to the Middle East, using the same models to understand Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia as it does for Egypt, Syria and the Gulf.
Seeing Tunisia as not another Arab country faced with an inevitable slide into authoritarianism, but as subject to a unique array of forces reflective of its historical and geographic location in Northern Africa is imperative.
Comparisons are made to generate insight. In this respect there is nothing intrinsically problematic with Egypt as a route to understanding Tunisia. The problem lies instead with the way comparison is used to deploy a particular narrative of Arab statehood that minimizes the space for more diverse connections reflective of the Maghreb’s unique political and historical composition.
Comparison should enable new ways of thinking about contemporary problems, not exclude them. As the world moves to a more uncertain place, a new framework to engage the Maghreb is perhaps needed more than ever.
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