Cargando…
Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring
Tunisia’s political system suffers from recurrent problems with governability and proportionality. A volatile party landscape, frequent cabinet reshuffles, and political gridlocks repeatedly jeopardized stability and democratic progress since the Arab Spring. Major and minor electoral reforms were u...
Autor principal: | |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
2023
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9993365/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12286-023-00561-z |
_version_ | 1784902515193544704 |
---|---|
author | Ali, Hager |
author_facet | Ali, Hager |
author_sort | Ali, Hager |
collection | PubMed |
description | Tunisia’s political system suffers from recurrent problems with governability and proportionality. A volatile party landscape, frequent cabinet reshuffles, and political gridlocks repeatedly jeopardized stability and democratic progress since the Arab Spring. Major and minor electoral reforms were undertaken in 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2022, but they were unable to diffuse either of these issues. This analysis is therefore driven by two central questions: How have Tunisia’s electoral laws changed since the Arab Spring? And why have these reforms failed to improve both governability and proportionality? It will be argued that because Tunisia’s party landscape is fractured and volatile only on the secularist side of the spectrum, coalitions with and against Ennahda are costly to all parties involved, worsening the overall quality of political representation. By analyzing the trajectory of major and minor electoral reforms longitudinally, this paper finds that Tunisia’s electoral reforms incrementally restricted the electoral system by limiting parties’ and candidates’ capacity to compete in elections. Through modifying legislation on campaign finance and subsidies, gender parity, and candidacy requirements, and finally abolishing Tunisia’s closed list PR-system in 2022, reforms benefit established older parties and wealthier candidates while fortifying the electoral system against newer and less wealthy contenders. Tunisia’s electoral reforms are inadequate in addressing governability and proportionality because restricting electoral competition alone cannot improve the quality of representation through political parties. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9993365 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99933652023-03-08 Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring Ali, Hager Z Vgl Polit Wiss Aufsatz Tunisia’s political system suffers from recurrent problems with governability and proportionality. A volatile party landscape, frequent cabinet reshuffles, and political gridlocks repeatedly jeopardized stability and democratic progress since the Arab Spring. Major and minor electoral reforms were undertaken in 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2022, but they were unable to diffuse either of these issues. This analysis is therefore driven by two central questions: How have Tunisia’s electoral laws changed since the Arab Spring? And why have these reforms failed to improve both governability and proportionality? It will be argued that because Tunisia’s party landscape is fractured and volatile only on the secularist side of the spectrum, coalitions with and against Ennahda are costly to all parties involved, worsening the overall quality of political representation. By analyzing the trajectory of major and minor electoral reforms longitudinally, this paper finds that Tunisia’s electoral reforms incrementally restricted the electoral system by limiting parties’ and candidates’ capacity to compete in elections. Through modifying legislation on campaign finance and subsidies, gender parity, and candidacy requirements, and finally abolishing Tunisia’s closed list PR-system in 2022, reforms benefit established older parties and wealthier candidates while fortifying the electoral system against newer and less wealthy contenders. Tunisia’s electoral reforms are inadequate in addressing governability and proportionality because restricting electoral competition alone cannot improve the quality of representation through political parties. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2023-03-08 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9993365/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12286-023-00561-z Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Aufsatz Ali, Hager Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring |
title | Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring |
title_full | Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring |
title_fullStr | Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring |
title_full_unstemmed | Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring |
title_short | Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring |
title_sort | defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on tunisia’s electoral system since the arab spring |
topic | Aufsatz |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9993365/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12286-023-00561-z |
work_keys_str_mv | AT alihager defenseagainstsmallpartieselectoralreformsandtheirimpactontunisiaselectoralsystemsincethearabspring |