The dark side of consensus in Tunisia: Lessons from 2015-2019 - 0 views
www.brookings.edu/...tunisia-lessons-from-2015-2019
Tunisia transition democracy parties politics government
shared by Ed Webb on 21 Feb 20
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Tunisia’s experience has also raised the concern of whether there is such a thing as too much consensus. In this paper, we argue that the extended pursuit of consensus in Tunisia has also had a dark side, constraining its democratic transition. In the name of consensus, the national unity government of 2015-2019 abandoned controversial but necessary issues like transitional justice and security sector reform and could not take bold action on the economy or on the formation of the Constitutional Court
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the consensus government merely postponed rather than resolved the underlying secular-Islamist tensions
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Ironically, the extended pursuit of consensus has now made it more difficult to not just form a consensus government but any government at all.
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If political parties do not feel comfortable leading the opposition out of fear of repression, then this means democracy is on shaky ground. The presence of consensus can thus be used as an indicator of the lack of democratic consolidation