Democracy Index 2011. Democracy under stress

Democracy under stress

26 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2011

TM

in Bahrain has been smothered, and both Yemen and Syria face the risk of prolonged violence as the

regimes of Ali Abdullah Saleh and Bashar al-Assad attempt to cling on to power at any cost.

Tunisia was the pioneer of this year’s Arab revolutions, and has made the most progress. The

election on October 23rd for a 218-member constituent assembly, was successful The Egyptian

revolution has been a much more turbulent affair than its Tunisian counterpart, and one of the main

differences between the two experiences has been in the nature of Islamist politics. Whereas Hizb al-

Nahda faces hardly any significant challenges to its dominance of the Islamist political scene in Tunisia,

the Muslim Brotherhood has to deal with a resurgent Salafi movement pushing a radical Islamist

agenda. The Salafis’ unambiguous and uncompromising approach to sensitive issues gives it a strong

appeal among a significant portion of the electorate. Another crucial difference is the hands-on role of

the army, through the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which assumed sovereign powers

after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president on February 11th. One of the salient themes of the

ongoing Egyptian revolution has been the failure of the radical groups that inspired the mass protests

in Tahrir Square in January and February to sustain that political momentum.

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