Divisive Electoral Policies within Authoritarian Elections

There is no universal agreement on the specific function of elections in the processes of political liberalisation on which many countries in the Arab World are embarked today. This work considers the argument that the observation of electoral policies is one of the best ways of approaching and understanding the role played by elections in these countries. In line with this predetermination, this article presents a case study focused on the Tunisian casuistry, aiming to clarify the role played by elections in the process of Tunisian political liberalisation on which Ben Ali embarked 22 years ago. With this purpose in mind, the analysis focuses on the parliamentary and presidential policies implemented throughout the five elections held in Tunisia between 1989 and 2009. In doing so, it seeks to answer the following questions: What was the covert strategy that underlies each election policy? What were the legal foundations for those policies? What impact did they have on the elections? Did they affect the configuration of the party system? As a result, this paper concludes that in the short term these elections have legitimated the prolongation of the dominance of Ben Ali and his party. In the long term, these have favoured three phenomena: first, the maintenance of the cleavage between insiders and outsiders of the legal system; second, the decomposition of the political image of the institutionalised parties; and third, the disarticulation of the non-institutionalised political forces.