Why (Relative) Silence in Tunisia Should not be Mistaken for Consent
Ayet Bouhajeb
24 August 2026
Despite severe economic hardship, democratic backsliding, and intensifying repression under President Kais Saied, Tunisia has not witnessed sustained large-scale mobilization comparable to the revolutionary moment of 2010–2011. At first, this appears puzzling. Inflation, shortages of basic goods and medicine, unemployment, declining public services, and the arrest of opposition figures, journalists, lawyers, and activists all seem like conditions that should generate revolt. Yet social movement theory cautions against assuming that grievances automatically produce mobilization. Protest requires political openings, organizational capacity, shared expectations, and credible strategies for action.
Recent protests complicate the idea that Tunisia is simply silent. In October 2025, Gabès became the center of major environmental protests against pollution linked to the Tunisian Chemical Group, with residents demanding the dismantling of polluting industrial units. The state responded with tear gas, arrests, intimidation, and reports of denial of access to counsel. On November 22, 2025, more than 1,000 protesters marched in downtown Tunis under the banner “Against Injustice,” demanding the release of political prisoners and denouncing Saied’s increasingly authoritarian rule. More recently, on May 16, 2026, protesters in Tunis marched under the slogan “The people are hungry and prisons are full,” using the empty basket, or couffin vide, as a symbol of collapsing purchasing power and the connection between economic pain and political repression. These protests show that discontent remains alive. The puzzle, then, is not the absence of anger, but why anger has not become a sustained, nationwide, regime-threatening movement.
One obvious explanation is the closure of political space. Since Saied’s July 2021 power grab, Tunisia’s public sphere has narrowed dramatically. Freedom House rated Tunisia 70/100 and “Free” in 2020; by its 2026 country profile, Tunisia had fallen to 42/100 and “Partly Free”. But repression alone cannot fully explain today’s paralysis. Tunisia was also repressive under Ben Ali, including on the eve of the 2010–2011 uprising. The key difference is that repression today operates after a failed democratic transition. In 2011, many Tunisians could still imagine rupture as the beginning of a new political horizon. Today, they carry the memory of a revolution whose promises of dignity, justice, employment, and accountable government remain largely unfulfilled.
This makes Tunisia’s current moment better understood as a second-round revolutionary problem. The first round of revolt had a clearer target: the removal of an authoritarian ruler and the opening of a new political horizon. A second round is harder to generate because it takes place after the disappointment of the first. If the revolution did not deliver dignity, employment, accountability, or better living conditions, and if daily life has in fact deteriorated further — then the very idea of revolutionary rupture becomes more uncertain. People may still reject authoritarianism, but they are also more skeptical of the promise that another uprising would necessarily produce something better. In similar cases across the region, renewed attempts at mass mobilization after failed or incomplete revolutions have often been fragmented, quickly repressed, or weakened by the fear that another rupture could deepen instability without producing a credible alternative. Tunisia’s dilemma lies precisely here: many citizens know what they oppose, but they do not see a trustworthy political project capable of governing the “day after.”
This crisis of alternatives is therefore not secondary, it is central to why a second revolutionary wave is harder to build than the first. Political parties that emerged after 2011 are widely associated with parliamentary deadlock, corruption, elite bargaining, and economic stagnation. Arab Barometer’s Wave VIII Tunisia report captures this contradiction: trust in Saied remained relatively high, while satisfaction with government performance and economic delivery was far weaker, especially on jobs, inflation, inequality, healthcare, and education. Many Tunisians may be dissatisfied with Saied without trusting the parties that preceded him. The question is therefore not only “Has Saied failed?” but “If not Saied, then who?” This absence of a credible alternative produces paralysis: frustration exists, but it lacks a convincing political vehicle.
The weakening of organizational structures deepens this paralysis. The 2011 revolution did not succeed simply because people were angry, it succeeded because anger moved through unions, local networks, professional associations, lawyers, activists, and regional structures. These organizations were not fully free under Ben Ali, but they retained enough social legitimacy and embeddedness to help transform scattered grievances into national contention. Omri describes the UGTT as “no ordinary union,” emphasizing its historical role as an institution capable of giving structure to protest and mediating national crises. Today, however, the UGTT’s role is far more ambiguous. Its early accommodation of Saied, internal divisions, and later confrontations with the regime have reduced its ability to function as the broad coordinating force it once was. The point is not that Tunisia had strong democratic organizations before 2011 and weak ones now. Rather, the post-2011 transition weakened the credibility, unity, and mobilizing authority of many intermediary institutions. As Tilly and Tarrow argue, contention depends not only on claims, but on the relational capacity of actors to coordinate, sustain, and scale them.
Blackman’s analysis helps clarify this dynamic. She argues that efforts to mobilize against Saied’s power grab have failed to slow democratic erosion because of two reinforcing forces: top-down regime control over key government institutions and deep popular frustration with Tunisia’s political class (Blackman 2024). This combination distinguishes the present from 2011. Under Ben Ali, opposition to the regime could gradually become a unifying demand. Under Saied, opposition to authoritarianism is filtered through disappointment with the political actors who governed after the revolution. Defending democracy is therefore complicated by the fact that, for many citizens, the democratic decade did not deliver material dignity or trustworthy representation.
Economic precarity further constrains collective action. The empty basket raised in Tunis in May 2026 is powerful because it connects hunger, inflation, and repression in one image. Yet hardship does not always lead to revolt. It can also exhaust people. When families are focused on finding medicine, food, transport, or work, survival can take priority over political engagement. Bayat’s account of everyday politics is useful here because it reminds us that political action in the Middle East often occurs outside formal movements: through daily acts of presence, negotiation, refusal, and survival. In Tunisia, economic suffering may produce anger, but it can also fragment people’s capacity to organize.
This is why silence should not be mistaken for consent. Under repressive conditions, dissent often moves into less visible spaces. Scott’s concept of “hidden transcripts” helps explain how criticism can survive privately, through jokes, cautious online speech, family conversations, satire, and diaspora discourse, even when public protest becomes dangerous.
The absence of large-scale protest in Tunisia therefore does not indicate the disappearance of political anger. Rather, it reflects a crisis of political possibility after a failed revolutionary transition. Repression matters, but it matters differently today than it did under Ben Ali because it operates in a society marked by disappointment, organizational weakening, economic exhaustion, and distrust of political alternatives. What appears as silence is better understood as political suspension: people are angry, but the mechanisms for turning anger into sustained mobilization remain fragile, risky, and unconvincing.
The central question is no longer why Tunisians are not simply returning to 2011. Revolutions cannot be summoned by crisis alone, and second-round revolutions are often harder than first ones because they emerge in the shadow of disappointment. When the first revolutionary opening fails to produce meaningful change, or is followed by deeper economic hardship and authoritarian regression, people may become less willing to risk another rupture without a credible alternative. If future mobilization is to avoid reproducing the same cycle, it will need more than opposition to Saied. It will require rebuilding trusted organizations, articulating a credible “day after,” and reconnecting demands for freedom with material struggles over work, dignity, food, health, and survival. In Tunisia today, silence does not mean consent, it reveals the difficulty of imagining a collective alternative that people believe can actually win.
The views expressed or implied in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Demos Tunisia-Democratic Sustainability Forum.
