Atlas / Organisations / Saied Presidentialism

Saied Presidentialism

2021– · Tunisia · Personalist · Held state power · coding confidence medium

00ECbalanced
+06CUtraditional
+09AUmonist
+08SCcentral
+06IDascriptive
+04CHcoercive

Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →

Core principles

A law professor elected on an anti-party platform who suspended parliament and rewrote the constitution to concentrate power in the presidency.

Economic model

Subsidy politics, IMF programme resisted, food import crisis.

Organisation of powers

Parliament dissolved, judges dismissed, opposition figures and journalists imprisoned, constitution replaced by referendum on low turnout.

Reading note

The Arab Spring's one democratic transition, reversed by an elected president within a decade.

Check a claim about Saied Presidentialism. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.

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The evidence for every score

All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.

EC · Economic organisation · scored 00

Coded at zero: subsidy politics with an IMF programme resisted.

  • Documented act or statuteThe government rejected IMF conditions on subsidy reform in 2023.

CU · Social and cultural order · scored +06

Coded +6: conservative nationalism with a personalist moral frame.

  • Programme textThe president has invoked national dignity and moral order as the basis of his mandate.

AU · Organisation of power · scored +09

Coded +9: an elected president who dismantled the constitution he was elected under.

  • Documented act or statuteParliament was suspended in July 2021 and dissolved in 2022; the judicial council was dissolved and judges dismissed.
  • Documented act or statuteA new constitution was adopted by referendum on around 30% turnout in 2022.

SC · Scale of decision · scored +08

Coded +8: local councils dissolved and a new bottom-up system decreed.

  • Documented act or statuteMunicipal councils were dissolved in 2023 and replaced under a new electoral law.

ID · Rule of membership · scored +06

Coded +6: a 2023 speech on sub-Saharan migration was followed by mass expulsions.

  • Documented act or statuteMigrants were expelled to desert border areas in 2023 following presidential remarks on demographic change.

CH · Method and tempo · scored +04

Coded +4: constitutional forms used to dismantle the constitution.

  • Documented act or statuteEmergency powers under Article 80 were invoked in 2021 and never relinquished.

Nearest organisations by measured distance

Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.

Countries

Tunisia

Cite this page

Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.

McGrath, K. (2026). Saied Presidentialism. The Political Atlas, version 4.2. https://thepoliticalatlas.com/organisations/saied/ (accessed 2026-08-01).

Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.