This chapter explores Tunisia's history as an authoritarian country that struggled with economic developing, ultimately resulting in a parasitic crony capitalist class closely allied with the regime. While the Arab Uprisings ushered in democracy, they failed to replace these crony networks as business engaged with parties in the new democracy. Unlike Egypt, Tunisia remained a democracy, but the presence of crony capitalists as party funders undermined reform efforts and the ultimate success of the democratic project.

Only a few weeks after Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire, Ennahda returned to Tunisia from exile. The same year Ennahda won Tunisia’s first free and fair elections in its history. On the night of the election, Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, vowed to uphold the revolutionary goals of building a free and prosperous Tunisia. And his party kept this promise to build Tunisian democracy with other stakeholders. Why did Ennahda adhere to democratic principles in power and became a force for compromise, deliberation, and engagement? This chapter shows that competing political visions have coexisted within the party organization since its establishment in the 1980s, and since the 1990s liberal Islamists pulled Ennahda towards democratic commitments not only when they were in opposition but also after coming to power in 2011. To explain this process, the chapter first turns to the origins of the Islamist movement in Tunisia and its political and ideological evolution over time including Ghannouchi’s philosophical contributions. Then it explores the shifting balance of power among factions and factors, determining this balance with a specific emphasis on organizational resources and implications for Tunisian democracy.

Tunisia, where the Arab Spring uprising started, became the only country in the Middle East and North Africa to transition to democracy. This chapter explains why Tunisia’s pathway to democratization was successful by focusing on its constitutional reform process. First, the chapter shows that in order for new constitutions to facilitate democratic transitions, both participation and inclusion in the process are necessary. Using empirical evidence from a statistical content analysis of the public input and constitutional drafts, as well as interviews from Tunisia, Chapter 3 shows the inclusive and participatory process significantly improved the democratic quality of the Tunisian Constitution, yielding a successful transition to democracy. Next, this chapter explains the role of civil society in facilitating the constitutional consensus and the broader transition. Civil society organizations in Tunisia could play this decisive role by fulfilling three core functions. First, they acted as a third-party arbiter of constitutional and political disputes among different groups. Second, different civil society organizations acted as watchdogs, ensuring the integrity and transparency of the process. Third, they created a public sphere for constitutional debates by offering an inclusive venue for citizens to engage in the constitution-making process.

This chapter looks at the interactions between the women’s movement, the king, the Salafis, Islamists, and the Islamist party, Party for Justice and Development (PJD), and the role the interactions between these actors played in bringing about gender reforms in Morocco. It shows how the symbolic uses of women’s rights made women and women’s rights a focal point of the contestations between the palace and the parties and a key instrument in the struggle against religious extremism. The chapter shows how the PJD changed its position regarding women’s rights for reasons of political expediency. It explores the role of the women’s movement in the middle of this unfolding contest. The chapter thus takes us through the main elements of the hypotheses outlined in Chapter 1 as they apply to Morocco.

This chapter looks at three waves of legislative reform to show how women participated in them. It shows how Tunisia’s authoritarian leaders used women’s rights as a means of creating an international image of the country as a modernizer and at the same time in an attempt to isolate Islamists, particularly extremists. The chapter describes the conflictual nature of the relationship between the secularists/feminists and Islamists and how it has evolved. It shows how the Ennahda Party has changed its position in order to maintain credibility and in response to push-back from women’s organizations and internal disputes.