Challenges to legitimate governance in post-revolution Tunisia
The power to craft Tunisia's post–Ben Ali government has been vested in the National Constituent Assembly, which was elected on 23 October 2011. The constituent assembly has sovereign authority to draft a new constitution and govern Tunisia until its replacement is elected. The first challenge confronting the constituent assembly will be to build legitimacy for itself and the transitional government that it will appoint. This paper places the constituent assembly in the context of post-revolution politics and summarises its role, responsibilities, and structure. The paper also anticipates key challenges to the constituent assembly's legitimacy as it works to meet the high expectations of Tunisians and the rest of the world.
Ḥizb al-Nahḍah: from revolution to government and to a second referendum
The year 2011 witnessed watershed events in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), resulting in long-awaited political and social transformation, with Tunisia acting as catalyst and modus operandi for the other countries of the region. Although the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ now seems to be gripped in a stalemate in Egypt, where vagueness still prevails, and in Syria and Libya, where the security situation continues to be extremely precarious and unstable, there seems to be a wind of change in the political context in Tunisia, where on 26 October 2014 the population witnessed the second post-revolution elections. The political party Ḥizb al-Nahḍah (Renaissance Party), officially founded in 1981, has been having a considerable impact on the political milieu of the region since its political career has experienced a renewed boost. Furthermore, Salafism has emerged as a legitimate force in the country demanding al-Nahḍah to redefine its role and strategy. While in power al-Nahḍah faced multif...
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r Revised. p Preliminary. 1 Net sales. 2 gee note marked " tf" for this page. t Revised series. Indexes have been revised beginning January 1949 to reflect adjustment to Census of Business benchmarks for 1954 and the up-dating of the seasonal and Easter corrections. Revisions for both unadjusted and seasonally adjusted sales indexes for January 1949-December 1956 (and scattered revisions beginning 1919) appear on pp. 19 and 20 of this issue of