The Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia and the Birth of the Arab Spring Uprisings

This chapter analyses the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia of 2010–2011 which gave birth to internal and external causes of this revolution, its course,the Arab Spring uprisings. It presents the internal and external causes of this revolution, its course, characteristics of the revolutionary movement, and to describes the results of the Tunisian revolution and the country’s development thereafter. The Tunisian Revolution of 2010–2011 launched the Arab Spring’s revolutionary wave and marked a radical transformation of the political system of Tunisia, which over the next ten years managed to move from authoritarianism to an unconsolidated democracy. Although the events at the end of 2010–2011 came as a surprise to both for the entire world community and the Tunisian political forces, a retrospective analysis shows that the crisis of the regime had been growing over the past several years, at least since 2008. The spontaneously developing protest movement forced both the government and various opposition political forces, as well as civil society organizations, primarily trade unions, to react. The tactics that various political actors chose were determined by the specifics of their historical experience, ideology, and place in the existing political system. During the period following the flight of Ben Ali from the country and ending with elections to the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) on October 23, 2011, many new actors, both institutionalized and not, appeared in the Tunisian political landscape. In the absence of a clear transition program, for some time a whole range of possibilities opened up for the country—from sliding into permanent violence to the construction of a radically democratic political regime based on direct popular self-government. Today, 10 years later, many of the past opportunities have already been forgotten, and many of the active participants in those events have left the political scene. Analysis of the events of this period allows us to understand how the new political elites of the country were formed and why they ultimately managed to avoid radical scenarios. This chapter is written on the basis of both open sources and material from a series of interviews by the author with Tunisian political and public figures, as well as materials published during the revolution and preserved in the author’s archives.