Building Trust in the Democratic Process

Abstract

Post-Arab Spring events indicate that democratic openings can result in power shifts from secular authoritarian regimes to mainstream Islamists, contributing to a heightened secular-religious political polarization. This chapter considers how Tunisia’s Islamists avoided this pitfall where other post-Arab Spring countries failed. It argues that one key factor that helped Tunisia’s democratic transition was the building of a minimum level of trust during pre-Arab Spring interactions between non-regime secularists and Islamists, rooted in the common understanding that democracy in Tunisia was desired by all political participants. The Islamists’ willingness to trust in the democratic process and to engage in consensus building with secular political partners helped mediate the many contentious conflicts that arose at critical junctures of Tunisia’s democratic transition.