One of the most striking things I observed in Tunisia after the pandemic was not just that people lost trust in the state and its institutions — it was what that loss of trust produced.
In most political contexts, institutional failure triggers protest, mobilization, contestation. In Tunisia after 2020, it produced something closer to withdrawal. Citizens did not fight back against a failing system. They quietly stopped believing it was worth fighting for.
The consequences became visible in July 2021, when President Kais Saied dissolved parliament. What was objectively a rupture of the democratic process was met with remarkably little popular resistance. Not because Tunisians approved — but because many had already disengaged from the institutions being dismantled. You cannot mourn what you have already buried.
This is what makes Tunisia such a revealing case for the questions INTERFACED is asking. The erosion of democratic participation did not happen through repression alone. It happened through disillusionment — gradual, quiet, and far harder to reverse than overt exclusion.
— Raja Chaabani, journalist and civil society researcher
In Tunisia, political disengagement is often misunderstood as apathy. But after years of economic struggles, political disappointment, and social exclusion, many people are not disengaged because they do not care — they are disengaged because they no longer feel represented or heard.
Through my experience in community organizing, especially with marginalized communities and young people, I realized that citizens still want dignity, justice, and participation. What is often missing is not interest, but trust and accessible spaces for meaningful engagement.
I believe democratic participation cannot only exist during elections. It must also live in neighborhoods, community discussions, grassroots initiatives, and everyday conversations where people feel safe to express themselves and imagine collective solutions.
For me, rebuilding civic participation starts with listening.
Allow me, with all due respect for the title “When Disengagement Becomes Consent: Tunisia’s Democratic Unraveling,” to offer a different reading of the political dynamics shaping Tunisian youth engagement.
From my modest perspective as a young political activist and observer, what is often described as youth disengagement from politics is, in fact, a disengagement from the classical and institutionalized forms of political participation, rather than from politics itself. It reflects an ongoing investment in new forms of political action that are network-based, issue-oriented, and largely unconstrained by ideological boundaries.
This mode of engagement is not entirely new. It resonates with a deeper Tunisian repertoire of contentious politics, characterized by moments in which fragmented social grievances converge into ambitious and far-reaching political demands. From the uprising of Ali Ben Ghedhahem to the Revolution of 17 December 2010 and the protest cycles that followed, Tunisian collective action has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to transcend incremental claims in favor of transformative political aspirations. In this sense, interpreting youth disengagement as a form of consent overlooks the profound generational transformations that have reshaped the political field and assumes that politics can only exist through conventional institutional channels.
I would further argue that whenever formal political institutions lose their legitimacy among young people—particularly their perceived capacity to enable citizens to shape their own political destiny—young generations respond by reconstructing the political sphere outside those institutions. Rather than disappearing, politics relocates itself into new spaces that often escape traditional analytical frameworks. These spaces are more flexible, more dynamic, and frequently more capable of mobilization than recognized political organizations such as parties or intermediary associations. They become arenas through which young people experience belonging, political efficacy, and self-realization, while rejecting hierarchical organizational structures and conventional forms of political representation.
If this interpretation is valid, then the logical implication is that as long as the crisis of confidence in traditional political intermediaries persists, new generations will continue to generate networked and issue-based forms of collective action organized around highly ambitious demands and shared causes. These mobilizations will emerge spontaneously, reappear with each new generational cohort, and preserve their fundamental characteristics even as their themes evolve. Their modes of expression may adapt to changing political contexts—particularly to varying levels of repression and fear—but such transformations should not be mistaken for political withdrawal or acquiescence. Rather, they signal an ongoing evolution in the forms, mechanisms, and organizational logics through which political action is expressed.