Reconsidering durability of authoritarian regime and possibilities of democratization in Tunisia

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2014

Öğrenci: NEBAHAT YAŞAR

Danışman: MELİHA ALTUNIŞIK

Özet:

This thesis analyzes the variables that have impacts on durability and stability of the authoritarian regime in order to examine the possibilities for successful democratic transformations in the context of Tunisia. This thesis chooses Tunisia as a case study since a fascinating example of both durability and vulnerability of authoritarian regimes. From formal independence in 1956 until a constitutional coup in 1987, Tunisia was ruled by a single-party. Due to a set of economic and political crises in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, with the support of political elites, became the new president and this paved the way for upgrading authoritarian regime in Tunisia. During Ben Ali era, regime in Tunisia was seen as the one of the most resilience authoritarian regime in the Middle East and North Africa; somehow Tunisians became successful to put meaningful pressure on the regime in 2010-2011 with popular uprisings and opened the way for a democratic transformation in their country. In this respect, this thesis aims to find out how the capacity of the regime and the opposition affected resilience of authoritarian regime in Tunisia. In addition to that, this thesis investigates the relationship between elite defection in ruling elite of an authoritarian regime leads crises and democratic transformation in a country. Thus, the basic conclusion of this thesis is that there are causal relations between durability, stability and vulnerability of authoritarian regime and capacity of the regime and capacity of the opposition.