“The monarchy is less feared and more popular. But this desacralization did not lead to democratization.”

Hicham Alaoui is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Member of the Moroccan royal family – he is a first cousin of King Mohammed VI – publishes Islam and democracy. How to change the face of the Arab world (Le Cherche-Midi, 528 pages, 22.50 euros), an essay on the contrasting trajectories of democratization in the Arab-Muslim area. He had already signed, in 2014, Diary of a banished prince (Grasset).

You studied the Egyptian and Tunisian cases in the context of the Arab revolutions of 2011. Were these experiences a failure?

To be successful, a transition to democracy must be the subject of a pact between rival political forces. HE covenant It is one of the ways out of the blockade that generally follows the breakdown of the authoritarian order. The forms it takes may explain the difference in national trajectories, between Egypt and Tunisia, for example.

In the Egyptian case, the failure is almost structural: there was a blockade due to the polarization between Islamists and secularists, which is a prerequisite for reaching a compromise, but there was no parity, since the Islamists were much stronger than the secularists. The army also played the role of spoilsport.

In the Tunisian case, initially, we could think that the covenant He had achieved this thanks to the government agreement sealed in 2015 between the Nidaa Tounès (modernist) and Ennahda (Islamist) parties. But President Kaïs Saïed’s coup in 2021 forced Tunisia to return to authoritarianism. If there was a failure, it was not that of the transition, but that of political transformation. Ennahda knew how to adapt to the demands of modernity. On the other hand, the political class as a whole froze the transition in very incestuous agreements – such as those between Nidaa Tounès and Ennahda – that caused a divorce between the population and the elites. We haven’t really returned to paternal authoritarianism. Instead, we have drifted toward authoritarianism 2.0, which is populism. However, populism is not the denial of democracy, but rather its capture. This is also proof that the transition was successful.

Transitions are not an ideal in themselves, but they are essential. This will be the case even in Egypt. Egyptians will understand that the army has no economic solution to their problems, and the Islamist opposition will admit that getting along with secularists is the best solution to confining the military in barracks. Secularists will understand that running after the military to protect themselves from Islamism is not a solution either. Everyone will have to get along.

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