Twelve years a slave? Ennahdha’s constrained (ir)responsibility in post-revolutionary Tunisia (2011–2023)

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ABSTRACT This article accounts for Ennahdha’s post-revolutionary trajectory and its role in paving the way for authoritarian reversal. Going beyond approaches in terms of (post)Islamism and moderation focusing on ideology, I argue that Ennahdha’s failure is not an ideological failure – the famous ‘failure of political Islam’ (Roy [1992]. L’échec de l’islam politique. Paris: Seuil.) – but a governance failure stemming from both structural obstacles and strategic mistakes. Far from intending to change the state’s nature, Ennahdha’s post-2011 trajectory is but an obsessive attempt to secure its inclusion and normalisation in the system, even if this meant sacrificing both reform prospects and electoral support. Internally, Ennahdha’s inability to carry out reforms in matters of leadership selection and decision-making and to clarify its economic vision was detrimental to its cohesion and its role in governance. Externally, its favoured ‘consensus politics (tawafuq)’, which translated into a ‘policy of the occupied chair’, led to freeze rather than solve conflicts and to hamper reforms, which paved the way for a populist interruption of the democratic process in July 2021. Ultimately, this meant that Ennahdha’s strategy of normalisation paradoxically clashed with the party’s self – preservation and the overall democratic transition. To unpack this process, the article relies on a body of 17 interviews, writings by Ennahdha leaders and close intellectuals, and an extensive literature review.