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The year of 2021 has been politically eventful for the Maghreb. Tunisia has witnessed a major political coup in July, while August sounded the death-knell for any possibility of reconciliation between Morocco and Algeria. A decade following the so-called Arab Spring, 2021 confirmed a trend; since the independences, the region appears to be stuck with the same structural problems: failing and/or slow socioeconomic development, decreasing prospects for democratization, and poor regional integration.
Tunisia, a country that, for the past decade, seemed like the only hope for a genuine democratic experience within the region, has been backpedaling on its democratic promises since the measures undertaken by president Kais Saied to “correct the revolution’s trajectory” on the 25th of July. The initiative, essentially a bloodless coup, is pretty revealing of the difficulties to maintain political reforms within an endemically corrupted socioeconomic environment where democratic institutions constantly fail the test of impartiality and efficiency. Corruption here must be understood in its large meaning, when monopoly on vital economic sectors and difficulties to diversify exports render a country so non-competitive that its citizens are constantly crushed in the global economy.
This article is part of BIC's "Discerning the Bigger Picture of International Crisis" End of the Year Review 2021.