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 ā 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 ā 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 ā gradual, quiet, and far harder to reverse than overt exclusion.
ā Raja Chaabani, journalist and civil society researcher
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