Mass issue positions

This section first examines the main political dimensions dividing Tunisian masses using survey data from three Arab Barometer waves II, III and IV.Footnote ³ The Tunisian surveys took place in 2011, 2013 and 2016 with an average sample of 1200 representing the 24 governorates. To arrive at the mass issue positions, I first calculate the relative differences for the non-valence (Deegan‐Krause Reference Deegan-Krause, Dalton and Klingemann2007: 539) questions of the three surveys. For instance, the excluded valence questions ask respondents to evaluate government performance or to what degree they have trust in certain political institutions. I use a relative difference threshold of 0.64 (or 64%), which means that the population is divided into at least 66% and 34% groups.Footnote ⁴ This inductive approach is an alternative to Bornschier’s (2020) approach using linear canonical discriminant analysis. The latter only applies mainly to countries with relatively high degree of party identification, something that is missing in Tunisia.Footnote ⁵

Out of the 200 questions on average in the survey, 14 questions met the 0.64 threshold. I can group the 14 questions around four categories, namely democracy, religion, gender and foreign relations. One of the most important questions under democracy is “To what extent do you think democracy is appropriate for your country?” Respondents can answer this question on a scale from one (democracy absolutely inappropriate) to ten (democracy completely appropriate). That the Tunisian public is divided on this issue is in line with the observation of Benstead (Reference Benstead2015) about the preference of Arab citizens including Tunisians to democracy as a regime type. Under religion, questions that met the threshold are mostly about the degree to which the laws should be in line with Islamic sharia law. These issues in particular are one of the grey areas for Islamists across the Arab world (Brown et al. Reference Brown, Hamzawy and Ottaway2006). The two questions on gender ask respondents about the qualification of women to become president or prime minister and their political leadership in comparison with men. Respondents answer most of the questions on religion and gender on a four-point scale ranging between “I strongly agree” to “I strongly disagree”. The question on foreign relations is about the degree to which respondents support stronger (economic) relations with Iran, and study subjects answer it on a three-point scale: preference for stronger relations, same relations or weaker relations than previous years.

Second, I use exploratory factor analysis to uncover the issues’ latent dimensions. Factor analysis is a common tool in the cleavage politics literature to clarify political dimensions (Zarycki and Nowak Reference Zarycki and Nowak2000; Westinen Reference Westinen2015). To account for the correlated factors, I adopt maximum-likelihood extraction with direct oblimin rotation in the factor analysis. The factor analysis shows that the different issues group around two political dimensions, namely democratic–authoritarian and secular–Islamist.

To arrive at the exact position of masses on both political dimensions, that is whether masses are pro-democracy and pro-Islamism, Table 1 presents the difference in percentages. I calculate the difference by subtracting those who are anti-democracy and anti-Islamism from those who are pro-democracy and pro-Islamism, respectively.Footnote ⁶ The general picture is that the Tunisian mass public has developed more authoritarian and more Islamist positions over time. Under the democratic–authoritarian dimension, the most important issue is the suitability of democracy for Tunisia. In 2016, more Tunisians (38.50%) believed that democracy does not suit Tunisia, compared to only 36.83% believing in its suitability. This is down from 48.91% who believed that democracy is suitable in Tunisia in 2011. Also, over time, Tunisians came to justify human rights violations by the government; they think that democracy is not effective at maintaining order and stability and believe that democracy has weak economic performance.

Table 1: Issue positions of Tunisian masses on the democratic–authoritarian and secular–Islamist dimensions (2011–2016).

Positive values mean that masses are pro-democracy or pro-Islamism, while negative values mean that masses are against democracy or Islamism

Source: Arab Barometer (survey waves II, III, IV)

On the secular–Islamist dimension, Tunisians, with a few exceptions, express Islamist attitudes. Tunisians who support the government and parliament to enact Islamic sharia law in general or particularly to personal status matters are nearly double those who are against that. Moreover, Tunisians in general have stronger preference for religious, not secular, political parties, despite a decrease in 2016. However, Tunisians have been against enacting penal laws according to Islamic sharia and are pro allowing banks to charge interests, despite being advocated as anti-Islamic by some religious scholars. This section now moves to examine whether elites are divided along the democratic–authoritarian and secular–Islamist dimensions.

Elite issue positions

I operationalise the positions of Tunisia’s elites as the positions of the two biggest political parties in Tunisia: Nidaa Tounes (secular) and Ennahda (Islamist). Ennahda was founded in 1972 under the name Islamic Group and is currently the biggest and oldest Islamist movement-turned political party in Tunisia. As a secular party, Nidaa Tounes was formed in 2012 by the former Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi, to counter the rise of Ennahda. The decision to focus on both parties is justified for two reasons. First, in the 2014 parliamentary elections, both Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes received 65.35% of the vote (37.56% for Nidaa Tounes and 27.79% for Ennahda), which translated to 155 seats or 71.4% of the parliament’s seats (International Foundation for Electoral Systems 2014). The party that received the largest share of the votes after Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda was the Free Patriotic Union, which only received 4.13% of the vote. Second, the fact that Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes were the main political parties that negotiated the 2013 political crisis, under mediation from the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet led by the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), speaks to their importance on the Tunisian political scene. The dialogue eventually led Ennahda to step down from their coalition-led government (Marks 2015).

To gauge the positions of Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes on both the democratic–authoritarian and secular–Islamist dimensions, I use certain positional sub-categories in the 2014 manifestos of both parties. I code the manifestos using the Manifesto Project’s methodology (Werner et al. 2015).Footnote ⁷ While party manifestos are usually an expression of saliency (Laver Reference Laver and Laver2003: 73), advocates of saliency theory argue that “emphasis equals direction” that is the position of political actors can be derived from the salience they attach to issues (Budge Reference Budge and Laver2003). This has been subject to heated debate in the literature, and several methods have been developed to measure issue positions of political actors based on their party manifestos (Dinas and Gemenis Reference Dinas and Gemenis2010). Shim and Gherghina (2020) map the different measurement options and data sources for both issue position and issue salience. As an alternative to party manifesto data, Bankov and Gherghina (2020) illustrate how to gauge elite issue positions by analysing speeches of political leaders. However, the fact that many sub-categories in the latest Manifesto Project’s coding instructions include positional coding, either positive or negative, justifies using manifesto data to identify party positions.

This article seeks to gauge the positions of the Tunisian political parties on the democratic–authoritarian and secular–Islamist dimensions. It uses the positional sub-categories that are relevant to both dimensions. Some of the chosen Manifesto Project’s coding sub-categories are included in the right–left (RILE) index (Volkens et al. 2018: 29) such as the sub-categories Freedom and human rights: positive and Constitutionalism: positive on the democratic–authoritarian dimension and the National way of life: positive and Traditional morality: positive on the secular–Islamist dimension. However, the proposed formulas below go beyond the RILE index by including the sub-categories Democracy general: positive and Political corruption: negative given Tunisia’s new democracy and how parties’ positions on that dimension should be taken seriously.

The democratic–authoritarian dimension is measured as follows:Footnote ⁸

Formula (1): Democratic–Authoritarian

$\begin{array}{c}[\text{Freedom}\text{and}\text{human}\text{rights:}\text{positive}+\text{Democracy}\text{general:}\text{positive}+\text{Constitutionalism:}\text{positive}+\text{Political}\text{corruption:}\text{negative}]\\ (-)\\ [\text{Democracy}\text{general:}\text{negative}+\text{Constitutionalism:}\text{negative}+\text{Pre - democratic}\text{elites:}\text{positive}]\end{array}$\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\begin{array}{*{20}c} {[{\text{Freedom}}\,{\text{and}}\,{\text{human}}\,{\text{rights:}}\,{\text{positive}}\, + \,{\text{Democracy}}\,{\text{general:}}\,{\text{positive}}\, + \,{\text{Constitutionalism:}}\,{\text{positive}}\, + \,{\text{Political}}\,{\text{corruption:}}\,{\text{negative}}]} \\ {( - )} \\ {[{\text{Democracy}}\,{\text{general:}}\,{\text{negative}}\, + \,{\text{Constitutionalism:}}\,{\text{negative}}\, + \,{\text{Pre - democratic}}\,{\text{elites:}}\,{\text{positive}}]} \\ \end{array}$$\end{document}

The secular–Islamist dimension is measured as follows:

Formula (2): Secular–Islamist

$\begin{array}{c}[\text{National}\text{way}\text{of}\text{life:}\text{positive}+\text{Traditional}\text{morality:}\text{positive}]\\ (-)\\ [\text{National}\text{way}\text{of}\text{life:}\text{negative}+\text{Traditional}\text{morality:}\text{negative}]\end{array}$\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\begin{array}{*{20}c} {[{\text{National}}\,{\text{way}}\,{\text{of}}\,{\text{life:}}\,{\text{positive}}\, + \,{\text{Traditional}}\,{\text{morality:}}\,{\text{positive}}]} \\ {( - )} \\ {[{\text{National}}\,{\text{way}}\,{\text{of}}\,{\text{life:}}\,{\text{negative}}\, + \,{\text{Traditional}}\,{\text{morality:}}\,{\text{negative}}]} \\ \end{array}$$\end{document}

On the democratic–authoritarian dimension, Ennahda scores 63 compared to 22 by Nidaa Tounes. On the secular–Islamist dimension, Ennahda scores 55 compared to 14 by Nidaa Tounes. This shows that Ennahda is further to the right on both dimensions, that is its manifesto maintains a more Islamist and more democratic position than Nidaa Tounes. Although Nidaa Tounes is the biggest secular party in Tunisia, its position on the secular–Islamist dimension does not concur that, being more towards the centre rather than the secular end.

Mass–elite differences

To measure the mass–elite differences on both dimensions, Table 2 compares both the issue positions of Tunisian masses and elites. I calculate mass positions via the mean of the difference in percentages explained earlier in Table 1, while I calculate elite positions using the mean of both the scores of Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes issue positions extracted from their manifestos. Since mass and elite positions are measured using different scales, they only reveal the direction of positions. The findings illustrate evolving mass–elite incongruence particularly on the democratic–authoritarian dimension.

Table 2: Mass–elite issue positions on the democratic–authoritarian and secular–Islamist dimensions in Tunisia.

Source: Arab Barometer for mass issue positions. Author calculations for elite issue positions

To cross-validate the results, I use a newly acquired data set of the 2014–2016 legislative voting of both Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes.Footnote ⁹ Between 2014 and 2016, there were a total of 134 law projects voted on by the Tunisian parliament. Almost two-thirds (62.6%) of the laws passed by the parliament’s majority, namely Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda concern economic loans and agreements. Pure economic policies and laws account for the second largest group of adopted laws (14.1%). Next comes freedom of democracy-related laws such as the access to information law, the higher judicial council law or revising other laws to be in line with the constitution (8.2%). It is worth noting that there are no laws that reflect the pro-Islamist positions of elites. In other words, while the manifestos reflected the positions of masses, their electoral voting patterns reveal evolving mass–elite discrepancy on the secular–Islamist dimension. In sum, Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes, as appear from their legislative voting patterns, have maintained their pro-democracy and deepened their anti-Islamism issue positions, leading to further mass–elite incongruence on both the democratic–authoritarian and secular–Islamist dimensions.Footnote ¹⁰ The next section examines which issues are salient to both masses and elites before examining mass–elite differences on issue salience.