Nostalgia and Populisms in Contemporary Tunisia

Thursday, October 22, 2020
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM (Pacific)

Online, via Zoom: REGISTER

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event: How does the widespread frustration that often accompanies democratic transitions shape the political cleavages underlying the party systems that emerge from them? Nine years after the 2010–11 uprising, Tunisia’s 2019 elections took place against a backdrop of widespread frustration with the party system that emerged during the ensuing transition. The elections presented opportunities to a diverse set of outsiders, many of whom brandished antiparty system messages, including unapologetic boosters of the former ruling party, a would-be plutocrat jailed on charges of corruption, and a broad set of antiparty independents. Drawing upon campaign materials and a nationally representative postelection survey, this presentation will describe the differences in the antiparty system messages and the ways that nostalgia underlies them. Through this analysis, I will consider a set of theoretical propositions arising from the literature on the dynamics of political cleavages in party systems in new democracies.

About the Speaker:

Nate Grubman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. In the fall, he will receive his PhD in political science from Yale University. His dissertation uses the case of postuprising Tunisia to explore the question of why party systems in many new democracies furnish few economic policy choices, as well as the consequences of this absence of choice. More broadly, his research focuses on political nostalgia, ideology, corruption, and authoritarian legacies in new democracies.

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