# Kais Saied's governance: the Tunisian President's drift from inclusive populist constitutionalism to 'Caesarism'

Thierry Desrues, Eric Gobe

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Thierry Desrues, Eric Gobe. Kais Saied's governance: the Tunisian President's drift from inclusive populist constitutionalism to 'Caesarism'. Journal of North African Studies, 2025, pp.1-26. 10.1080/13629387.2025.2469056. halshs-05097974

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# Kais Saied’s governance: the Tunisian President’s drift from inclusive populist constitutionalism to ‘Caesarism’

Thierry Desrues & Eric Gobe

**To cite this article:** Thierry Desrues & Eric Gobe (10 Mar 2025): Kais Saied's governance: the Tunisian President's drift from inclusive populist constitutionalism to 'Caesarism', The Journal of North African Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13629387.2025.2469056

**To link to this article:** https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2025.2469056

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# Kais Saied's governance: the Tunisian President's drift from inclusive populist constitutionalism to 'Caesarism'

Thierry Desrues ID a and Eric Gobe ID b

aInstitute for Advanced Social Studies, Spanish National Research Council (IESA,CSIC), Córdoba, Spain; bAix Marseille Univ, CNRS, IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence, France

## ABSTRACT

This article analyses the evolution of Kais Saied's governance since his accession to the presidency of the Tunisian Republic in 1999. It postulates that this governance has evolved from an inclusive populist project supported by a constitutional doctrine to an authoritarian populist regime of political 'Caesarism'. To test this hypothesis, it examines the nature of the coup d'état carried out on 21st of July 2021, pointing out that Kais Saied was supported by the security forces. Next, it recalls the context of Kais Saied's project of populist constitutionalism, focusing on his own conception of his political mission and the pre-constitutional decisions he took that paved the way for constitutional reform and the failure of his plebiscitary ratification. It scrutinises the main features of the new constitution Kais Saied drafted, which show that it establishes a regime in which the President of the Republic assimilates himself to the will of the people and aspires to unlimited power. Finally, it examines the limits of certain tools that are supposed to represent inclusive democracy from below and the presidential elections in 2024 that lead us to consider that it would be more appropriate to speak of a democracy without the people.

**ARTICLE HISTORY** Received 20 January 2024; Accepted 13 February 2025

**KEYWORDS** Authoritarianism; democratic backsliding; populism; Tunisia; Arab political regimes

## 1. Introduction

On 13th of October 2019, Kais Saied's election as President of the Republic of Tunisia without the support of any political party installed a retired university lecturer in public law at the Head of the State. This constitutionalist, known to the general public for his television appearances, was elected on a platform

**CONTACT** Thierry Desrues

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tdesrues@iesa.csic.es

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IESA-CSIC, Campo Santo de los Mártires, 7, Córdoba 14004, Spain

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
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advocating the resolution of the country's political, economic and social crises through a far-reaching legal reform of its institutions. This political project means the dismantling of the representative liberal democracy instituted by the 2014 constitution, itself drafted, according to Kais Saied, by 'corrupt elites' and intermediary bodies that allegedly betrayed the popular will expressed during the 2010–2011 Tunisian revolution. The new Head of State's objective is therefore to 'redress the course of the revolution' so as to establish a constitution that simultaneously enshrines the construction of a bottom-up democracy based on local assemblies and the institutional primacy of the Head of State, himself the guarantor of popular sovereignty and national unity.

In the light of this brief introduction of Kais Saied's project it can be argued that it shares certain fundamental features of populism, such as the promotion of the will of the true people and the rejection of partisan elites (Arato and Cohen 2022; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017). Today there is a consensus that there is not a single form of populism but rather a variety of different forms, each with profoundly different political consequences. Populism is therefore a 'chameleonic' syndrome, ideology, discourse, political style or political regime, that appears in different times and places, but that is always constituted by aspects of its environment that resonate with 'the heartland' (Taggart 2000). Populism can be left-wing (inclusive) or right-wing (exclusive), organised in top-down or bottom-up fashion, rely on strong leaders or be even leaderless (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013). Populism is also defined by a specific relationship with political time (Hermet 2008), in the sense that it promises that the answers it provides to the expectations of the population and the application of its programme will be immediate and without procrastination, unlike the long time required for decision-making, deliberation and the application of the policies of representative democracy. Consequently, the popular sovereignty embodied by populist power allows the latter to bypass inherited legal processes or to reform them in such a way that the will of the people is satisfied. This is why populist powers are also characterised by their propensity to reform constitutions once they are in power. This is known as 'populist constitutionalism' (Blokker 2019; Halmaï 2019).

The starting point for Kais Saied's constitutional populism was the 2010–2011 Tunisian revolution. Although he never opposed Ben Ali's authoritarian regime, he was literally fascinated by the popular sit-ins that occupied the *Place de la Kasbah* opposite the Prime Minister's office in Tunis in 2011 (known as Kasbah 1 and 2) (Camau 2023, 279–284). He believed these sit-ins represented the direct exercise of the will of the people by the people. According to the President, the Kasbah 2 sit-in was the 'only real parliament Tunisia had ever known' and 'Tunisia's real constitution' was the one 'written by Tunisians on the walls'.¹
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However, he claimed the political parties had unfortunately triumphed over the youth²: 'The elite of the elite³, self-appointed representatives of the people, hijacked the revolution in their favour by diverting it towards the path of 'democratic transition', a 'commodity imported' (Elleuch et al. 2022) by westernised and alienated circles. To resume the course of the 'real revolution', we need to get rid of the 'partitocracy'⁴ that stole the revolution from the Tunisian people. In this sense, he considers that his programme proposes a vision of democratic participation that is more advanced than liberal democracy, but since the Parliament elected in 2014 does not wish to contribute to this project by ratifying the decisions that give concrete form to this democratic radicalism, Kais Saied has decided to ignore it, with popular sovereignty taking precedence over the legitimacy of legality.

In the context of inclusive and bottom-up populism, the dilemma facing charismatic leaders is what institutional mechanisms to establish and how to routinise this charisma or, in other words, how to continue mobilising the population to publicly manifest their adhesion to the political leadership and thus contribute to legitimize their power and decisions in the face of their adversaries (Ayubi 1995). This imperative is more problematic in the case of some populist leaderships, such as Kais Saied's⁵, when it pretends to be inclusive but does not have the support of an organised political or social force capable of mediating the activation of mobilisation and contributing to the hegemony of populist power. In this situation, there is a risk that an existential contradiction may arise for inclusive populism, which from 'bottom up' is circumscribed to 'top down' decision-making processes explicitly supported by a small group of the faithful and the security services. In these circumstances, the probabilities are high that this conflict will end in a new hegemonic crisis and that the immediate solution to stay in power will be a coup d'état, i.e. Caesarist.

By carrying out an *autogolpe* (Redissi 2022), a self-staged coup d'état or autocoup, on 25th of July 2021, legitimised by resorting to the very constitution that he wanted to abolish, Kais Saied illustrated the aporia of a hypothetical 'populist constitutionalism' and the authoritarian logic that underpins it: the constitution must serve a substantial objective, defined by the president himself who, in the name of the people's will, must prevail over forms and procedures. Kais Saied's political trajectory is paradigmatic of many populisms' propensity to destroy the principles of constitutionalism and liberal democracy (Levitsky and Loxton 2019), transgress the rules of law they have established, monopolise power on a personal basis with the support of the security forces, thus resembling Caesarism.

Caesarism is an authoritarian tendency that used to be reflected in the emergence of a charismatic figure who denounces the pre-existing parliamentary political system and claims to achieve power by relying directly on
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the people, to whom he promises to return sovereignty. While some historians describe the imperial regime of Napoleon III after the coup d'état of the mid-nineteenth century – supported on the one hand by the army and security services and on the other ratified by the plebiscite of the masses – as an example of 'Caesarism' (Baehr and Richter 2004), Antonio Gramsci uses the term 'Caesarism' to describe a situation marked by a discredited, divided and weakened political elite which loses its ability to serve as the people's representative as political parties and parliament are rejected by the discontented masses (Hoare and Sperber 2015). In the first case, the specific features of 'Caesarism' are an output – the support of security forces and the subsequent plebiscitary legitimisation of the coup d'état – while in the second case they are an input – an 'organic crisis' which refers to a structural crisis in which political institutions are no longer able to regulate social tensions.

In this article, we postulate that the accession of a populism such as that embodied by Kais Saied to the presidency of the Republic seems to us to be a symptom of the 'organic crisis' that Tunisia is experiencing, and that his presidency since 2021 has evolved from an inclusive populist regime to a regime of political Caesarism. Our aim is therefore to show that Kais Saied's political project is above all a populist constitutional project underpinned by a constitutional doctrine that, on the face of it, embraces a number of the institutional dimensions of 'inclusive populism' (local assemblies, revocation of representatives' mandates, etc.).⁶ In practice, however, it mirrors the contours of authoritarian populism (presidentialism, anti-parliamentarianism, submission of the judiciary to the executive and dismantling of checks and balances) and relies more and more on the security forces as its inability to mobilise the population to support its reform projects grows.

To test this premise, we begin by analysing the nature of the coup d'état carried out by Kais Saied on 21 July 2021 to demonstrate that it was indeed a coup supported by the security forces and that this decision was consistent with the vision of his political mission. We then present the background to Kais Saied's project of populist constitutionalism, focusing on his own conception of his political mission, the pre-constitutional decisions he took that paved the way for constitutional reform, and his desire for plebiscitary ratification in the pure populist tradition. We then analyse the main features of the constitution he drafted, which show that it establishes a presidential regime in which the President of the Republic assimilates himself to the will of the people and aspires to unlimited power, putting an end to the liberal norm of self-limitation of power.⁷ Finally, we confirm this trend by examining the limits of certain tools that are supposed to represent inclusive democracy or democracy from below in his populist project and the transformation of October 2024 Presidential
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elections into a plebiscite for the ratification of the Head of State. These limitations lead us to consider that it would be more appropriate to speak of a democracy without the people and therefore from above. All these characteristics would therefore confirm the hypothesis of Caesarism as a subtype of Kais Saied's populist regime.

## 2. A civilian backed by the security apparatus leads a coup d'état

Although he was triumphantly elected president in 2019 with his radical programme of constitutional reform, Kais Saied faces a daunting obstacle: he does not have the political resources to implement it. His rejection of political parties has led him to enter the presidential race without actually taking an interest in the legislative elections, and therefore without a political party as an electoral machine capable of electing MPs who support his political vision. During his 2019 election campaign, the President of the Republic had declared that the successful implementation of his project did not depend on his own will, but rather on Parliament's, which 'could just as easily accept it as reject it'.⁸

At the time, these statements suggested that the 2014 constitution still prevailed over the will of the people, which he claimed to embody. Nevertheless, on 25th of July 2021, he seised upon the multifaceted crisis affecting the country (an institutional, economic, social and epidemiological one) to announce the activation of Article 80 of the Constitution, relating to a state of emergency on grounds of the 'imminent danger' to the country's institutions and independence. Kais Saied, who had chosen to broadcast his speech on the President's Facebook page, appeared flanked by the most senior members of the army and the Ministry of the Interior. With the support of the heads of the security forces, he announced a freeze on parliamentary activity, the dismissal of the head of government, and took charge of the public prosecutor's office.

Moreover, the army's involvement in the coup d'état is clear from the fact that military units are blocking access to Parliament and preventing its president and certain MPs from entering. It was in the name of, among other things, the deteriorating security situation, 'the ongoing arson and looting operations', 'the pouring of money into working-class neighbourhoods with a view to stirring up conflict', 'the sabotage of the State' and 'the destruction of its capacities', that the President decided to 'save Tunisian society and the State'. The day of 25th July began with protests. From the morning, social networks were flooded with videos showing demonstrations in several regions, with individuals breaking into and vandalising the regional headquarters of the Islamist-conservative party Ennahda, while others massed in front of the Assembly of People's Representatives (ARP) carrying slogans demanding its
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dissolution. These protests provided an ideal excuse for the President of the Republic to invoke the existence of an 'imminent danger' and activate Article 80 of the Constitution.

In so doing, the Head of State presented his decision as part of the revolutionary process, simply responding to the people's call to save the country: 'The people are continuing their revolution under the seal of legitimacy'. The scenes of popular jubilation that followed the President's decision seemed to prove him right. Despite the fact that a night-time curfew had come into force, the towns' inhabitants invaded the squares and streets, cheering the President's decisions. The opposition appeared to be powerless in the face of a President of the Republic who now enjoyed full powers and strong popular support.

Although the Head of State presented his decision within the framework of the constitution, he interpreted it in a transgressive way. Firstly, he suspended parliament, when, according to the letter of the text, it should have been kept in permanent session; secondly, he dismissed the head of government, a measure not provided for in Article 80; and thirdly, he did not have to inform the president of the Constitutional Court, which never saw the light of day, even though it could have been the final institutional obstacle to the president's will. In other words, Kais Saied declared a state of emergency and then unconstitutionally concentrated all the powers in his hands with the support of the security apparatus (army and interior ministry). This was an illegal seizure of state power, which allows us to speak not only of an autocoup, a self-coup d'état, but also to consider it a contemporary example of Caesarism.

### 3. The antecedents of the populism constitutionalism project of Kais Saied and the pre-constituent decisions to pave the way to the personal power

The 25th of July 2021 autocoup enabled the President of the Republic to begin implementing a constitutional project that he had summarily theorised in a number of writings and speeches. While Kais Saied, like other populists, is obsessed with constitutional issues (Arato and Cohen 2022), he is archetypal in this respect, in that firstly he believes in his political destiny as a redemptive and messianic mission and in the exclusive performativity of constitutional constructs to resolve Tunisia's socio-economic problems and meet the demands for recognition of the disadvantaged categories he has championed. Secondly, as the source of legitimacy, the people must be able to exercise their sovereignty over and above legal procedures, and in the event of incapacity, it is up to the President of the Republic, who embodies the will of the people, to take the necessary decisions. Armed with this legitimacy, Kais Saied
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therefore took a series of decisions designed to ensure that the consti-
tution was reformed and legitimised by means of a popular consultation
transformed into a genuine plebiscite. The referendum campaign would
be an opportunity to repress the opposition and spread a discourse that
transforms the political adversary into an enemy.

**3.1. Antecedents to the constitutional reform: a prophet in his own country**

Kais Saied, who claims that he never wanted power (he did not vote for himself in the 2019 presidential election⁹) and that he wants to be nothing more than the receptacle and instrument of the people's sovereignty, thus produces a 'theological-political' version of a 'prophetic imaginary' specific to populism (Arato and Cohen 2022, 105). In the electoral breviary drafted in 2019 by Kais Saied himself, the constitutional reform project of the future President of the Tunisian Republic is a message of a redemptive and messianic nature that aims not only to ensure the salvation of the Tunisian people, but also the redemption of humanity as a whole, as shown by this extract:

> 'The way to express your true will is to rebuild from the bottom up, from the local to the centre, so that all laws and legislation [...] express your will, carry your hopes, echo your demands and aspirations, in keeping with the revolutionary explosion that started in the delegations and villages before reaching its climax at the centre. This new foundation, placed under the seal of the slogan "the people want", stems from a reading of that historic stage, not only in Tunisia, but throughout the world. Humanity has entered a new stage in its history'.¹⁰

From this statement he concludes that opponents of this 'new paradigm'
only 'understand their own interests', and are unable to disentangle them-
selves from 'their personal ambitions, greed and whims'.¹¹ Kais Saied con-
structs a polarisation that pits 'us', the mass of disinherited people and
'sincere patriots' (the pure people) against 'them', a corrupt political elite
that has appropriated the country's wealth.¹² This is convergent with his
friend/enemy conception of politics.

Likewise, he sees his mission as a trial sent down to him by God¹³, as
revealed by the many Koranic references that pepper his statements, such
as the epigraph at the start of his first press release describing the main
thrusts of building from the bottom up, which is a supplication taken from
verse 286 of the Koranic sura 'The Cow': 'Our Lord! Do not saddle us with a
burden like that with which you saddled those who lived before us'.¹⁴
During the 2019 election campaign, he stated that he had been obliged to
shoulder this 'burden', hence his reference to another verse of the same
sura (verse 216), phrased in an imperative mode this time, instructing the
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believer to fight, even if the fight proved unpleasant ('the fight is prescribed for you even though it seems odious to you').

Finally, his mission would regularly put him in mortal danger, at least if we are to believe the successive announcements of plots to assassinate him, since his accession to the presidency of the Republic.

We can therefore affirm that this imaginary crystallises in his person not only most of the attributes of the 'religious populist leader', but also, as a 'moral archetype', those of the 'leader-prophet', and last but not least those of the martyr, 'a heroic and stoic figure who goes through pain and tribulation to accomplish his mission'.¹⁵

**3.2. Putting in place a pre-constituent power to lock in the configuration of future power**

A little less than three months later, he created a pre-constituent power by rolling out a 'set of rules and procedures aimed at establishing a constituent procedure, thereby justifying and politically imposing the constituent phenomenon, along with its form, methods as well as political and philosophical objectives' (Mrad 2022, 158).

To this end, on 22nd of September 2021 he issued Presidential Decree 117 on emergency measures. This decree established a provisional organisation of public powers aimed at managing a new intermediate phase leading to the adoption of a new constitution by referendum. The decree developed a typically populist constitutional argument, asserting the absolute primacy of constituent power (held by the people) over the constitution. As the source of legitimacy, the people must be able to exercise their sovereignty over and above legal procedures (Corrias 2016). The President's reasoning is therefore based on a legitimising argument construed in the form of a syllogism: '1. the people want to exercise their sovereignty; 2. the constitution, in its current provisions, is an obstacle to the exercise of sovereignty by the people; 3. the people want a change of constitution. The popular sovereignty principle and the will of the people do invalidate the entire institutional mechanism of the 2014 constitution' (Bras and Gobe 2023). The text gives the President of the Republic all legislative and executive powers, which he exercises by means of decrees and decree-laws, and sets out the principles for future constitutional reforms. The decree-laws 'are not subject to appeal for annulment' (art. 7) and he may submit any draft decree-laws to a referendum about any matter (art. 15). Likewise, according to article 22 of the decree, 'the President of the Republic draws up draft revisions relating to political reforms with the assistance of a commission whose organization is set by presidential decree', which means that Kais Saied remains, from start to finish, the master of the pre-constitutional process (Mrad 2022, 173). Kais Saied has thus vested himself with the right to suspend by decree the
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essence of the 2014 constitution (the highest text in the hierarchy of norms),
in the name of the sovereign people.

In parallel with the constitutional process, the President of the Republic is
eliminating all institutional checks and balances: he is subjugating the judi-
ciary (dissolution of the former Supreme Council of the Judiciary (CSM), cre-
ation of a provisional CSM, dismissal of 57 magistrates), dissolving parliament
after suspending it, doing away with several independent public authorities
(shutdown of the National Anti-Corruption Commission and abolition of the
Provisional Commission for the Control of Bill Constitutionality) and changing
the procedures for appointing members of the Supreme Commission for the
Independence of Elections.

**3.3. Kais Saied's inclusive populism: the failure of the plebiscitary strategy of 25th of July 2022**

As of late 2021, Kais Saied embarked on a 'plebiscitary strategy'. On 13th of
December, he announced a roadmap that ultimately led to the adoption
by referendum of the constitution he had drafted and the organisation of leg-
islative elections on 17th of December 2022. We can say that since his 25st of
July autocoup, all the constitutional law professor's reservations about the
referendum, which a few years ago he still regarded as 'a tool of dictatorships
in disguise', have given way to the President's urge for power: it has become
the ultimate tool of popular will, and those who oppose it fear the people.

The central thrust of the plebiscitary strategy was to hysterise the election
stakes by resorting to a discourse aimed at creating ‘a severe affective politi-
cal polarization’ in the political arena, articulated to a ‘paranoid style of poli-
tics’ to use the American historian Richard Hofstader’s formulation (2008). In
philosopher Chantal Mouffe’s vocabulary (2005, 20), we can say that Kais
Saied is no longer in a relationship between political adversaries, but in an
antagonistic relationship that ‘is a We/They relation in which the two sides
are enemies who do not share any common ground’. Extreme affective polar-
isation is all the more ‘pernicious’ as it is charged with ‘antipathy and distrust
toward opposing parties, candidates and social groups’ (McCoy, Tahmina,
and Somer 2018, 19). Moreover, it involves a political process ‘using dis-
courses designed to generate, deepen, amplify, and exploit sociopolitical
cleavages and resentments’ (Arato and Cohen 2022, 96), an art Kais Saied
has particularly excelled at. From late 2021, the president began to use a
vocabulary consisting of denying his opponents their humanity. For instance,
his political ‘enemies’, never named, were thus called ‘insects’, ‘beasts and
hyenas’, during the Najla Bouden’s government inauguration ceremony on
October 11.¹⁶

On the other hand, the plebiscitary link between Kais Saied and ‘the
people’ is not based on a mass organisation capable of mobilising voters.
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By taking the populist logic of a direct link between the people and the leader to its logical conclusion, the President has not only marginalised political parties, he has also failed to set up a partisan structure capable of supporting him and mobilising the population. In so doing, by refusing to create a party, Kais Saied faces a major obstacle in the conduct of electoral and referendum campaigns: he is unable 'to address collective action problems in the process of electoral mobilization' (Roberts 2017, 297).

The referendum campaign starting in June 2022 is a further stage in the intensification of the antagonism between friend and foe. This was seised as an opportunity by the police to crack down on opponents¹⁷, while the President's cronies are involved in an intense populist propaganda operation in favour of the referendum, notably on the first national public TV channel. This populist dimension is highlighted by the following examples. Firstly, in the direct expression spots recorded for the referendum campaign, Kais Saied's supporters, presented at the bottom of the screen as 'physical persons' (*shakhs tabii*)¹⁸, were able to indulge in an exercise in demonising the decade preceding the coup d'état, referred to, by analogy with the name given to Algerian civil war years (1992–2000), as 'the Black Decade'.¹⁹ Secondly, by using outrageous language, lashing out at the 2014 constitution, the 'absolute evil' that led to Tunisia's political and economic collapse, and adopting some of the insulting metaphors ('microbes', 'insects', 'cancer cells', etc.) used by the President. Thirdly, by publishing a memorandum purporting to explain the constitution, which is in fact a diatribe against parliamentary party democracy and which presents the current President of the Republic as the saviour embodying the revolutionary will of the people.²⁰ The memorandum, entitled 'the State has a constitution that protects rights and freedoms, the people have a revolution that they defend against their aggressors', sets the tone in this respect. It is peppered with expressions that support the 'messianic idea of the need to save the people' from the enemy that is contaminating them (Arato and Cohen 2019, 108). From the very first line of the text, the President attacks those who have repeatedly made 'attempts to strike at the unity of the State'. His opponents, never named and referred to by the personal pronoun 'they', 'have emptied the State's coffers', 'impoverished the poorest' and 'increased the wealth of the corrupt'. Moreover, (they) have engaged in 'unacceptable practices' within Parliament, using 'insults, name-calling and defamation'. All these are so many acts that forced Kais Saied to shoulder his 'historic responsibility' and fulfil 'his duty' to 'freeze Parliament's activity and then dissolve it' in order to 'safeguard the institutions' that were 'on the verge of collapse'. The memorandum concludes with a sentence in which the president – like a prophet – promises Tunisians heaven on earth once they adopt his constitution: 'Say yes, so that the State does not collapse, so that the revolution's objectives
are achieved, so that there is no more misery, terrorism, famine, injustice or
pain'.

On 25th of July 2022, the anniversary of the Tunisian Republic's creation and the first anniversary of the President's self-coup, the 'yes' to the draft constitution won with 94.6% of voters. Unsurprisingly, the President celebrated this 'historic day' and attacked those who had conspired to turn people away from polling stations. However, this score, worthy of those achieved by dictator Ben Ali before 2011, was marred by a low turnout (30.5%). The plebiscitary strategy typical of inclusive populism had failed.

**4. An all-powerful President embodying the people**

The new constitution was promulgated on 17th of August 2022²¹, establishing a populist autocracy, a new version of Caesarism designed to serve the President of the Republic and his supporters, and which essentially excludes all others. Nevertheless, although Kais Saied unfolds the various components of his populism and its drift towards Caesarism in the constitutional text through a vision that is almost prophetic of the mission of the President who has become, in the words of French sociologist Pierre Rosanvallon, a 'leader embodying the people', a 'People-Man'²², we can see some features of his project during the 2019 presidential election campaign and his first two years at the head of the Tunisian state.

**4.1. 'We' and the people: the President who merges the Tunisian people in his person**

The constitutional text invokes the 'We' of the Tunisian people who carried
out the '17th of December 2010' revolution, who rebelled 'against injustice,
tyranny, starvation and abuse' and 'received nothing in return but fallacious
slogans and promises' (preamble). The 'We' of the Tunisian people also refers
to Kais Saied's 'historical responsibility': 'We were [...] obliged to straighten
out the course of the revolution, indeed the course of history, a mission
accomplished on 25th of July 2021, the date of the commemoration of the
proclamation of the Republic' (preamble). In other words, the 25th of July
Declaration achieved constituent status by re-establishing the link between
the will of the people and its fulfilment by Kais Saied. In this way, the Presi-
dent justified his self-coup d'état, claiming it had been carried out by the
people. The Head of State makes the people into a substantial whole embos-
died in him, the saviour, the People-Man who merges the Tunisian people in
his person and who never says 'I want', but who says 'the people want' and
who makes himself 'a depersonalized leader, a pure representative, a figure
totally absorbed in role' (Rosanvallon 2021, 30). The president is thus a
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'medium' through whom 'the voice of the people resounds' (Narendra Modi, quoted by Müller 2020).

In this way, he seeks to incorporate power into his person by building on 'the coincidence of the people with themselves' (Corrias 2016, 21). Accordingly, the One-People is identified with the People-Man, who aspires to concentrate all power because he embodies the unity of the State, the revolution and the will of the people.

## 4.2. Constitutionalism and the national identity

Kais Saied's One-People refers to an excluding constitutional identity²³, marked by nativism supported by a legal and cultural definition of nationality (Sharma 2020). Conservative in terms of morals, it borrows ideologically from Arabism, from a sovereignist nationalism with variable geometry. From his point of view, the Tunisian people's constitutional identity is that of a self-contained ethnos, a part of the Arab nation and the Muslim community. Arabic language and Arab-Islamic culture and history are at the heart of the Tunisian people's 'constitutional identity' which are affirmed in the pre-amble to the new constitution, as is the requirement that the President of the Republic be a Muslim (art. 88), while article 44, which addresses the right to education, states that 'the State shall ensure that the younger generations are rooted in their Arab-Islamic identity and their national belonging'.

It should be pointed out that this Islam of the Tunisian people, as conceived by Kais Saied, is the 'true' Islam, the Islam of every Muslim, not the same as that of his enemies, the Islamists of the Ennahda party. Ennahda's Islam is not the Islam of the Tunisian people. It is 'political Islam', 'a notion that was developed abroad' and, as such, can be likened by Kais Saied to heresy. As the President likes to remind us: 'God has spoken to Muslims and believers, not to Islamists'.²⁴ He has also managed to project the image of a Muslim president, embodying Tunisians' ordinary Islam: 'The Archangel Gabriel brought the revelation to the Messenger of God for the first time in the cave of Hira, not in Montplaisir [the district of Tunis that houses the Ennahda party's headquarters]'.²⁵

In fact, despite this enmity, there are no major doctrinal differences between Kais Saied's conservative Islam and that of Ennahda leaders or the Salafist movements as confirmed by the debate about inheritance inequality between men and women, the Head of State rejecting equality between men and women in inheritance, arguing that the Koranic precepts are based on justice (Tamburini 2023, 916).

Kais Saied's refusal to consider Islam as the Tunisian state's religion on the grounds that a legal entity 'has no religion'²⁶ does not mean the Tunisian state should not promote Islam – quite the contrary. According to article 5 of the constitution, 'Tunisia is part of the Islamic nation [umma]. The State
<figure><img src="image_25.png" /></figure>

alone must work, in a democratic regime, to achieve the aims [maqasid] of authentic Islam, which are to preserve life, honour, property, religion and freedom'. In other words, not only is the state now the exclusive guardian of religion, but it is also the state's duty to take public action to serve the aims of Islam (Bras 2022). The 2022 constitution thus transforms the 'neutral' and 'civil' state of the 2014 constitutional text into a state at the service of the Muslim religion. Ultimately, as a populist leader, the President embodies the will of the people and, consequently, his perception of religion cannot be other than that of the people and underpins his project of 'building from the bottom up'.²⁷

### 4.3. The Presidency of the Republic: the hallmark of an autocratic regime²⁸

It makes the President of the Republic the exclusive holder of executive power, dubbed the 'executive function'. It effectively reduces the three powers customary in the constitutionalist tradition – executive, legislative and judicial – to mere functions. This change in terminology, that is the use of the word function instead of power, is not insignificant, as we shall see in the following paragraphs. Assisted by a head of government, responsible to the head of state alone, the president appoints and dismisses ministers at will. The government's role is limited to implementing the policies laid down by the author of the July 25th declaration, who is the repository of the people's will. Moreover, the government's accountability to Parliament mentioned in article 115 is purely nominal, since a parliamentary motion of censure is only admissible if it is signed by a third of the members of both legislative chambers before being adopted by a qualified two-thirds majority, and is therefore virtually impossible to implement.

In addition to his powers to formulate public policy and appoint senior civil and military officials, the President has numerous legislative powers: he can issue decree-laws during parliamentary recesses, obtain authorisation from the ARP to govern by decree-laws for a limited period (art. 70) and, above all, he can submit directly to referendum – i.e. without going through Parliament – 'any bill relating to the organization of public powers' (art. 97).

Likewise, there is no denying that the 'jurisdictional function' is dependent on the Head of State. Firstly, article 120 of the constitution, by stating that magistrates' appointments fall within the president's prerogatives, ditches the 2014 constitution's mechanism for appointing magistrates, which required the *Conseil supérieur de la magistrature's* assent. Secondly, article 119 simply states that a High Council oversees each type (judicial, administrative and financial) of justice, without specifying its remit and the rules governing its composition. As for the Constitutional Court, it is 'pegged to the President's body'²⁹: while the Head of State appoints all magistrates, it is
<figure><img src="image_26.png" /></figure>

precisely composed of the 9 judges with the highest seniority in their respective jurisdictional orders (art. 125).

By replacing the term 'power' with 'function' in his text, Kais Saied wished to signify the end of the separation of powers. In fact, only the 'executive function' deserves to be referred to as a power, in view of the President's very broad remit. On the other hand, the legislative and jurisdictional functions are aptly named, since, as we have just seen, the executive controls them directly or indirectly through various constitutional mechanisms.

Kais Saied's text establishes an all-powerful president exonerated from all political responsibility. Even if the President of the Republic were to seriously violate the Constitution, the text makes no provision for impeachment. On the contrary, he has broad powers that enable him to disregard the provisions of the constitution and extend his power as the head of state indefinitely. Article 90, which stipulates that the President of the Republic is elected 'for a period of 5 years by direct, free and secret universal suffrage', specifies that 'if elections cannot be held in time due to war or imminent peril, the presidential term is extended by law until the reasons which led to its extension cease to exist'. In other words, by mobilising the ductile notion of 'imminent peril', the President can extend his term of office without any time limit. Better still, the Head of State, still relying on the reference to 'imminent peril', can proclaim a state of exception (art. 96) and extend it at will, since no one but himself can put an end to it. This reasoning, taken to its logical extreme, leads populist leaders such as Kais Saied 'to obliterate the distinction between extraordinary and normal powers' (Arato and Cohen 2022, 184).

**5. The false impression of 'democratic constitutionalism' building from the bottom up**

The President's constitutional doctrine, as well as the constitution and the various decree-laws issued by Kais Saied, apparently enshrine the exercise of a 'bottom-up' democracy, based on the decentralisation of power. The truth is that the bottom up approach appears only implicitly in the preamble of the constitution and the institutional architecture doesn't strengthen the local, regional and national assemblies.³⁰ In fact, the institutions architecture is designed to allow bottom-up construction to flourish, while downgrading the 'legislative function' of the assemblies.³¹

**5.1. A bicameral parliament with two logics: elections from the bottom up and decisions from the top of the State**

Kais Saied's constitution provides for a bicameral parliament in which the first chamber, the Assembly of the People's Representatives (APR), only partially reflects the philosophy of grassroots construction, notably through the way
<figure><img src="image_27.png" /></figure>

MPs are elected. By contrast, the second chamber, the National Council of Regions and Districts, is directly in line with the President's political project. This second assembly, which (the constitution specifies) participates alongside the APR in the tabling and voting of any motion of censure against the government, as well as in the adoption of 'projects relating to the State budget and regional, district and national development plans' (art. 84), together with article 75, which explicitly refers to 'local assemblies', constitutes the main constitutional anchor for bottom-up construction.

The constitutional text is supplemented by three decree-laws, which provide the legal framework for this construction's institutional architecture. The most important decree-law is decree-law no. 10, 'relating to the organization of elections to local councils and the composition of regional and district councils'³² which are not directly elected. Elections are held at sector level (Imada, the smallest administrative district in the State's decentralised organisation) using a two-round uninominal voting system. The representatives thus elected form a local assembly at delegation level (the second-order administrative district), in which local administrations' directors sit without voting rights (art. 27). At the level of the higher territorial administrative unit, regional councils are made up of one member from each local assembly (art. 21). Elected members from the local assemblies alternate on these councils by lot every three months (art. 22). Next, each regional council elects one representative to the district council (art. 34) and three deputies to the national council of regions and districts (art. 35). Last but not least, district councils also elect a representative to the national council of regions (art. 36). Although local assemblies and regional and district councils' remits are not defined in the decree-law, the bottom-up logic of building from the ground up means that development proposals emanating from assemblies and councils should be synthesised as they pass through each level. It should also be noted that the text drafted by Kais Saied provides for the presence of decentralised administration directors appointed by their supervisory minister. Although these civil servants do not have the right to vote, their grasp of issues is likely to reinforce the concentration of effective power in the hands of the executive.³³

On reading the constitution and legislative texts published since the July 25, 2021 autocoup, it becomes clear that the president has methodically dynamited the principles of decentralisation organised by Chapter VII of the 2014 constitution. While the latter text included 12 articles on the subject, the 2022 constitution includes just one. This is inspired by article 71 of the 1959 Tunisian constitution, which merely mentions the type of local authorities and refers the definition of their powers to the law. Unlike the 2014 constitution, the 2022 constitution no longer mentions the principle of subsidiarity in the distribution of powers between decentralised and central authorities, nor does it refer to the principles of free administration. Furthermore, the constitution disregards
<figure><img src="image_28.png" /></figure>

the principle of financial and administrative independence of local authorities, as well as their a posteriori control by administrative justice. From the point of view of Kais Saied, municipalities are a threat to the unity and cohesion of the State. So, while it is not surprising that the Ministry of Local Affairs has vanished in the October 2021 government, the dissolution of local councils in March 2023 is a much more important measure taken by the President of the Repub-lic, carried out on grounds that they had 'seriously breached the law' and 'harmed local residents' interests'.³⁴ The decree-law is also an expression of the President's determination to rely on the administration, with the text stipu-lating that the communes' general secretaries, placed under the Governor's authority, are responsible for managing and administering day-to-day munici-pal affairs (art. 2).³⁵

## 5.2. The misuse of 'democratic' tools in 'bottom-up construction': towards a top down populism?

The 'democratic' tools mobilised within the framework of this institutional machinery, notably the drawing of lots for representatives, popular sponsor-ship, the recall of elected representatives and the first-past-the-post voting system, are being misused. The misuse of these instruments provides an opportunity for legal experts to highlight the contradictions of bottom-up construction and turn the presidential argument on its head (Elleuch et al. 2022: 46). Indeed, Kais Saied repeatedly accuses so-called 'Westernized' Tuni-sian constitutionalists and political elites of immersing themselves in 'a culture of alienation' by importing foreign concepts and legal-political mech-anisms 'without bothering to examine their content'.³⁶ However, the Presi-dent of the Republic uses these democratic tools to reinforce presidential power in a political system without political parties.

In this respect, the first democratic tool, the drawing of lots, conceived by Kais Saied, does not fulfil the functions it was originally conceived for, i.e. as an instrument to forestall the professionalisation of political activity and the oligarchic drift of power. The decree-law stipulates that the drawing of lots concerns local assemblies' elected representatives, destined to sit on regional councils, which means it contradicts the principle that citizens are governing and governed in turn. Transforming itself into a mechanism of 'second-order selection after first-degree election', the bottom-up construction draw loses its original meaning by introducing a 'distortion in electoral representation' (Elleuch et al. 2022: 47).

The second democratic mechanism put forward by Kais Saied – popular sponsorship of election candidates – makes it possible to invoke male/female parity while de facto preventing it from occurring within elected assemblies. Two decree-laws require all candidates to produce a list of 50 sponsorships³⁷ from voters registered in their electoral district for local
<figure><img src="image_29.png" /></figure>

assembly elections, and 400 for legislative elections³⁸, evenly apportioned between men and women. However, providing for gender parity among voters who sponsor candidates in no way guarantees equal representation in the assemblies³⁹, as demonstrated by the legislative elections held in the winter of 2022–2023. Only 25 women won a seat, i.e. 16% of the total number of elected MPs, almost half as many as in 2014 and 2019.⁴⁰ As noted by Ikram Ben Said 'This means approximately 50 percent less women with the opportunity to influence the legislative policy agenda'.⁴¹

In so doing, article 51 of the Constitution, which stipulates that 'the State guarantees equal opportunities for men and women in access to various responsibilities and in all fields' and that it 'strives to establish parity between women and men in elected assemblies', is not being complied with.

Furthermore, the demographic imbalances between the administrative territorial units corresponding to the electoral districts are not without effect on the conditions under which candidates collect sponsorships. The slight discrepancy between the number of voters and the number of sponsorships required has already led, in the first legislative elections of the Kais Saied era, to the absence of candidates or electoral competition⁴²: no candidacy was registered in 7 constituencies and only one in 10 of them, while in 44 other constituencies there were fewer than 5 candidates. In addition, the conditions for obtaining sponsorships, in particular the obligation for sponsoring voters to travel and sign their support, gave rise to financial exchanges with candidates, mainly in constituencies where the number of voters is particularly low.

The third democratic tool at the heart of the bottom-up approach, mentioned in the constitution (art. 61) and specified in the electoral law, is the possibility for voters to remove elected representatives from office, in accordance with the procedures laid down by law. Through dismissal, voters would exercise close control over their representatives and be able to hold them to account. This mechanism, which the French *communards* had implemented with the imperative mandate at the time of the Paris Commune in 1871, had raised Karl Marx's hopes of seeing the birth of political representation truly 'at the service of the people' (Vandamme 2021). But far from constituting a perfect solution to the representative government's oligarchic drift rising from the independence of elected representatives from their electors, revocation is not without perverse effects. Its Tunisian opponents have pointed out that the procedure could be abused by a popular president eager to settle scores with elected representatives who oppose his policies.⁴³

The fourth democratic tool for grassroots construction is the two-round first-past-the-post system in small constituencies. According to Kais Saied, this voting system is in osmosis with the revolution and the movement of history, because it enables the people to create a direct link between voters and elected representatives.⁴⁴ Implemented by the September 15,
<figure><img src="image_30.png" /></figure>

2022 decree-law on elections and referendums, this voting system, combined with the abolition of public funding for election campaigns and the ban on candidates running as party representatives, is designed primarily to eliminate from electoral representation the political parties which are not allowed to organise demonstrations or public meetings during the election campaign. In this sense, Kais Saied takes the 'anti-partisan' logic of populism to its logical conclusion (Urbinati 2019, 40). Party participation in elections is restricted to supporting individual candidates. At national level, Kais Saied adopted a measure advocated by American populists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, namely to prohibit municipal candidates 'from campaigning under a partisan label to avoid political capture by the parties' (Mény and Surel 2000, 57). Secondly, combined with the need for candidates to submit a local development programme to their sponsors, the first-past-the-post system is a tool designed to confine politics to local affairs, denying the existence of competing national economic and social interests and projects. In other words, bottom-up construction is tantamount to cancelling the national political field.

### 5.3. Is Kais Saied a left-wing populist?

Some Tunisian academics see Kais Saied's stances as an expression of left-wing populism (Gassoumi 2020; Mansar 2023). They do so all the more readily because the President of the Republic counts among his closest supporters the members of a left-wing collective, the Forces de la Tunisie Libre (FTL), created in February 2011, at the time of the so-called Kasbah 2 sit-in. Led intellectually mainly by Ridha Chiheb el-Mekki, alias Ridha Lénine, whom Kais Saied had met at university, the FTL present themselves as progressive, revolutionary and post-Marxist. They are keen to promote a radical democracy political project, inspired by revolutionary councilism, rejecting the Tunisian system of representative democracy, which is said to have betrayed the people and their revolution. It has to be said that Kais Saied blithely mixes his conservative ideas with the 'progressive' ones of the radical left embodied by the FTL. However, it seems difficult to link Kais Saied's essentialist conception of the people to left-wing populism, which, as theorised by Laclau (2005) and Mouffe (2018), refers to a constructive process whereby a citizens community becomes a collective subject ('the people') that resists another collective (the elites, the oligarchy, the establishment, etc.). Moreover, left-wing populism is inclusive, making sexual minorities and libertarian movements components of the people challenging the elites' hegemony. This is not true of Kais Saied, who excludes the latter from the people and considers their representatives to be Trojan horses of the West, whose aim is to destroy Tunisian society by introducing values at odds with Tunisians' Arab-Muslim identity. As Tunisian political scientist
<figure><img src="image_31.png" /></figure>

Hamadi Redissi (2020: 36) asserts, 'Kais Saied represents an unprecedented and corrosive mix of confused ideas from both the conservative right and the protest left, which met on the terrain of values and crystallized, in part, in the 2022 constitution'.

The 'democratic' tools described above do not seem to have fulfilled their objective of promoting greater electoral participation of the population. The legislative elections of December 2022 and January 2023 were a non-event: the electoral campaign was non-existent⁴⁵; turnout was derisory (around 10%) and once again gave President Kais Saied the opportunity to accuse the opposition of high treason towards the Tunisian people. The same trend marked the following year's local elections: the participation rates were – officially 11.66% in the first round and 12.44% in the second. The election campaign was conducted in an atmosphere of indifference. In the name of the ideology of building from the bottom up, there were no plans for candidates to express themselves directly in the public media. As the electoral campaign was to be based solely on personal relationships between candidates and voters in the geographical areas concerned, Kais Saied's supporters saw no need to mobilise the media. Ultimately, the expected 'natural' electoral dynamic, that emanating from the grassroots, did not crystallize during these elections.

If the polls published in the months following the parliamentary elections are anything to go by, Kais Saied continued to enjoy a high popularity rating, on the strength of his status as an 'honest man', an outspoken critic of corruption and always ready to clean out the Augean stables. In February 2023, a poll published by Sigma Conseil placed Kais Saied at the top of voting intentions in the presidential election first round, with 49%, well ahead of his successor, Safi Saïd (10.3%).⁴⁶ In June 2023, a poll by Emrhod Consulting affirmed that 56% of Tunisians were satisfied with Kais Saied's performance, and that Kais Saied would win the presidential election in the first round with 68.7%.⁴⁷

In other words, popular support for the President does not extend to his ideological and institutional project. Kais Saied's popularity stems from what journalist Zyed Krichen calls 'a fundamental misunderstanding': Tunisians supporting the president do not see him as the bearer of the ideological project of building from the bottom up, but rather as 'a strong, honest and clean president, in the old Eastern style as a just despot who represents the state and is worthy of embodying it, unlike the figures of the 'black decade' who 'stole' the state'.⁴⁸

## 6. Caesarism and presidentialism: turning the October 6, 2024 election into a plebiscite

The October 6, 2024 presidential election largely confirmed Zyed Krichen's assertion: the President of the Republic transformed the presidential ballot
<figure><img src="image_32.png" /></figure>

into a plebiscite about himself. Conceived by Kais Saied as an epic campaign against the enemies of the people, this election was bound to result in his massive re-election. Kais Saied's plebiscitary strategy was twofold. The first consisted in eliminating the most dangerous competitors for President of the Republic, by mobilising the resources of a law applied in a discretionary, even arbitrary, manner to personalities with any inclination to run for the presidency. The second, as in the case of the 2022 referendum, aims to make the presidential election a political moment for intensifying the antagonism between populism friend and foe. Kais Saied intervened in the official campaign on two occasions. The first took the form of his campaign manifesto, a resolutely bellicose text made public shortly after the electoral campaign official opening date, as well as an oral speech, largely echoing the formulations of the manifesto published on October 4 on Facebook in the form of a video, with the scales of justice in the background.⁴⁹

Both texts are peppered with expressions casting political opponents 'as immoral and corrupt, in the pay of foreign interests' (Rosanvallon 2021, 152) who are constantly conspiring against the Tunisian people. Yet the latter, in osmosis with Kais Saied the 'people-man', bravely confronted his enemies in a merciless war: 'Together we waged a long war of attrition against the reaction forces and the mercenaries inside, themselves in symbiosis with foreign circles'.⁵⁰ Opponents are reduced by the President to 'debris' who 'have infiltrated many public institutions, systematically blocking their normal functioning'. All Tunisia's economic and social difficulties are the result of a plot by enemies from within, never mentioned by name: 'They have hidden many food products, created medicines shortages ... they have indulged in speculation and monopoly'.⁵¹

Kais Saied's strategy paid off, as he was re-elected with almost 2.5 million votes, or 90.69% of the votes cast. Although the low turnout (28.8%) meant that the plebiscite was only half-hearted, the turnout was significantly higher than in the parliamentary and local elections, and came close to the 2.6 million votes that approved the 2022 constitution by referendum. While the victory appears indisputable, the 'mass of voters' who supported Kais Saied is, as Mohamed Rami Abdelmoula notes, 'without name or address: it is not framed or even united by the same premises and aspirations, nor by the same promises and projects'.⁵²

## 7. Conclusion

The loss of credibility of the pre-25 July political elite, the opposition of parliament to his political project and the deterioration of the economic situation gave Kais Saied the opportunity to carry out a coup d'état which he presented, initially as a university professor of public law, as being constitutional. Nevertheless, we have shown that it was a coup d'état contrary to the letter of
<figure><img src="image_33.png" /></figure>

the constitution. On the basis of his self-coup, the Tunisian president has pro-
moted a new constitutional order which dismantled the democratic liberal
regime instituted in 2014. In so doing, Kais Saied considers his political
action and his constitutional project as ushering Tunisia into a new political
era of refoundation. Consequently, for the President of the Republic, produ-
cing a new constitution is a redemptive act by which to get rid of the 2014
constitution, in order to (re-) establish the sovereignty and rule of the people.

Kais Saied's political experimentation overlaps with many other populist
regimes. However, as we have seen, he has specific characteristics linked to
his person, such as being a constitutionalist, or to his conception of its
mission, which in many respects appears to be expressed in messianic terms.
His speeches suggest that only God and history can judge his actions. Likewise,
the Tunisian context emphasises the Arab-Muslim dimension of Kais Saied
mission, the legitimisation of the reforms and the constitutional national iden-
tity. Similarly, the radical nature of his inclusive populism project, is 'revolution-
ary' in his speeches and his popularity seems still large, as reflected in the
popular demonstrations of joy after the declaration of the coup. Nevertheless,
this popularity was not confirmed when the population was called upon to
ratify the new regime's institutions. In this sense, we have underlined the
gap between its rhetoric and the reality of the rising politics.

We have also pointed out that it has attacked fundamental principles of
liberal constitutionalism: he has put an end to the institutional checks and
balances that can act as a counterweight to the executive; removed the leg-
islative power of the assemblies created at the various territorial levels; per-
secuted the political opposition and lowered the quality of the electoral
process by changing the rules of the game and competing with online mech-
anisms. This policy confirms the authoritarian nature of the regime that Kais
Saied has been installing since 2021, while the population's lack of interest in
its institutional architecture puts its inclusive nature into sharp perspective,
giving substance to our hypothesis of a drift towards 'Caesarism'.

This conclusion is also confirmed by the fact that the President tends to
exercise an unlimited form of political power, in which extraordinary
measures become ordinary, and that, beyond the letter of his constitution,
Kais Saied fails to invoke the legal basis of certain decree-laws or provisions
when their application fails to produce the desired results. Generally speaking,
procedures must not stand in the way of the pure popular will, embodied
by Kais Saied.

Although the President remains popular, it should be noted that it is more
accurate to speak of 'top down' populism rather than 'bottom up' popular
will. After his victory in the 2024 presidential election, and given the
context it took place in, it seems that Kais Saied will have to rely more and
more on the security services and the army, which supported his self-coup,
placing him in the purest Caesarist tradition.
<figure><img src="image_34.png" /></figure>

## Notes

1. Interview by Kais Saied quoted in Jendoubi (2018, 202–204).

2. See the seminar with the participation of Kais Saied about the interview given by former President of the Republic, Béji Caid Essebsi, September 23, 2017. Published in Observatoire de la Révolution Tunisienne (2022, 18–29).

3. Electoral statement by Kais Saied quoted in Abbes (2019, 77).

4. In the Tunisian context, the critique of partitocracy is that of the historic political consensus/compromise (Tawafouq) reached in 2013 between the Islamist party Ennahdha and Nidaa Tounes, a political party founded in 2012 by Beji Caid Essebsi, an experienced politician from pre-revolutionary Tunisia and interim Prime Minister in the aftermath of the fall of the Ben Ali regime. Ennahdha and Nidaa Tounes are two ideological adversaries who have colluded to share state resources and control access to public institutions. These two parties have formed a political cartel more or less open to other political parties participating in the various government coalitions. This cartel was perceived by Kais Saied and the majority of the population as a machine for sharing the ‘spoils’ of state resources.

5. For an analysis of the birth of populism in Tunisia and Kais Saied’s rise to power, see Camau (2020) and Gobe (2022).

6. To carry out our demonstration, we rely on Kais Saied’s public textual and audiovisual productions: his speeches, his published texts, the videos published on the Presidency of the Republic’s Facebook page, an intervention in a seminar on the political regime instituted by the 2014 constitution, his rare interviews given to the press and on the occasion of the publication of a book paying tribute to the 2011 revolution, as well as the 2022 constitution, the decrees and legislative decrees drafted by himself and his advisors. We also used the Tunisian press, both print and online, as well as the work of Kais Saied’s young intellectual supporter, Khalil Abbes, who, in an apologetic work, quotes extensively from the manifesto drafted by candidate Saied for his 2019 presidential election campaign (known as the ‘explanatory’ campaign).

7. The self-limitation of power is a ‘normative criterion that makes it possible to distinguish between populist mobilization and liberal-democratic revolution’. See Ochoa Espejo (2017).

8. Interview with Kais Saied, candidate for the presidency of the Republic, First National TV Channel) (in Arabic), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38RJJgjwOoE

9. See *Charaa Magherebi*, ‘Interview with Kais Saied’ (in Arabic), 2019.

10. Electoral statement by Kais Saied quoted by Abbes (2019, 76).

11. *Ibid.*, 77.

12. See Ghorbali Fouad, ‘Tunisia: the revolution splits against itself’ (in Arabic), *Safir Arabi*, 13/01/2022, https://bit.ly/42ZDXNg

13. *Ibid*.

14. See ‘For a new foundation by Professor Kais Saied’ (in Arabic), https://bit.ly/44czTLn.

15. About Populism and religion see Zúquete (2020).

16. *Facebook*, ‘Swearing-in ceremony of Najla Bouden’s government’ (in Arabic), 11/10/2021, https://bit.ly/41JLdjy
<figure><img src="image_35.png" /></figure>

17. Mahdi Oumayma, 'An electoral wedding for the president's supporters and a violent crackdown on opponents' (in Arabic), *Legal Agenda*, 28/09, 2022, https://bit.ly/3pnYSMw

18. This means they are ordinary citizens who are not members of a political party. See Nabli Yassine, 'The Yes campaign: individuals speaking on behalf of a single individual' (in Arabic), *Legal Agenda*, 28/09, 2022, https://bit.ly/46e5fC2

19. Explanatory memorandum (in Arabic), 2 July, 2022, https://bit.ly/3ptv80x

20. The presidential decree-law on the revision of the June 1, 2022 electoral law, provided for its publication before the start of the referendum campaign. JORT, Decree-Law no. 2022-34 of June 1, 2022, amending and supplementing Organic Law no. 2014-16 of May 26, 2014 on elections and referendums, n° 63, 01/06/2022, 1841, https://bit.ly/44809nQ

21. DCAF Tunisia, Presidential Decree No. 2022-691 of August 17, 2022, promulgating the Constitution of the Republic of Tunisia, https://legislation-securite.tn/ar/law/105339

22. 'The leader can be viewed as a pure organ of the people. He is not only the chosen one or the delegate, that is, the representative in the procedural sense of the term: it is he who renders the people present in the figurative sense; it is he who gives the people a form and a face' (Rosanvallon 2021, 30).

23. The Constitutional identity refers to a supposed 'national character of a people, formed of dispositions that are not only lasting but that also ought to last because of the normative force populists attach to a certain religion, history, culture, etc.' See Corrias (2016, 22-23).

24. Speech by Kais Saïed at Zitouna University April 12, 2021 to mark the beginning of the month of Ramadan (in Arabic), https://bit.ly/3JuDxl0

25. See *Charaa Magherebi*, 'Interview with Kais Saied' (in Arabic), 2019.

26. See Seminar around the interview given by Béji Caïd Essebsi, September 23, 2017. With the participation of Kais Saied, Ahmed Ben Mustafa and Naoufel Slama (in Arabic), 2022, 18-29

27. Arbi Khalil, 'The religious and political field in the president's constitution: populism as a vehicle for the religious state' (in Arabic), *Legal Agenda*, 10/04, 2023, https://bit.ly/3F2rY8l

28. This section includes some arguments of the brief note published by Eric Gobe on the ISPI website, 'Saïed's Constitution, an authoritarian project behind a bottom-up curtain', 21st of July, 2022, https://www.ispionline.it/en/publication/saieds-constitution-authoritarian-project-behind-bottom-curtain-35847

29. M'rad Hatem, 'Les désillusions du constitutionnalisme', *Le courrier de l'Atlas*, 02/07/2022, https://bit.ly/3CM5APu

30. Sleimia Asma, 'Saied's draft constitution: the final nail in the coffin of local power' (in Arabic), *Legal Agenda*, 08/07/2022, https://bit.ly/3CN5abE

31. The Constitution makes no provision for Parliament to be financially or administratively independent.

32. JORT, Decree-law no. 2023-10 of March 8, 2023, on the organization of local council elections and the composition of regional and district councils, n° 29, 09/03/2023, 694-698, https://bit.ly/46IB9gs

33. Elleuch Mahdi, 'President completes 'bottom-up construction' on the rubble of democracy and decentralization' (in Arabic), *Legal Agenda*, 12/03/2023, https://bit.ly/42TWQ4h
<figure><img src="image_36.png" /></figure>

34. République tunisienne, Portail des collectivités locale, 'Organic law no. 2018–29 of May 9, 2018, relating to the local government code', https://bit.ly/3NJKs2z

35. See the Decree-law no. 2023-9 of March 8, 2023, dissolving municipal councils for the year 2023, JORT, n° 24, p. 694.

36. Seminar around the interview given by Béji Caïd Essebsi, September 23, 2017 (in Arabic), 2022.

37. JORT, Décret-loi n°2023-10 du 8 mars 2023, on the organization of local council elections and the composition of regional and district councils, n° 29, 09/03/2023, 694-698, https://bit.ly/46IB9gs

38. Article 21 of Decree-law No. 2022-55 of September 15, 2022, amending and supplementing Organic Law No. 2014-16 of May 26, 2014 on elections and referendums., JORT, 102, 15/09/2022, https://bit.ly/3XtptEj

39. Krichen Zied, 'On the sidelines of the new electoral law: a strategy to expel women and parties from citizenship' (in Arabic), Le Maghreb, 17/09/2022.

40. Marzouki Karim, 'Legislative elections in Tunisia ... The people don't want what the president wants' (in Arabic), Ultra Sawt, 31/13/2023, https://bit.ly/3NMgVW3

41. 'Confronting an Assault on Democracy in Tunisia, Carnegie Endowment.' 2023. https://bit.ly/49TQs2e

42. Elleuch Mahdi, 'Mystifying elections: when the 'novice magician' comes up against the contradictions of his project' (in Arabic), Legal Agenda, 25/10/2022, https://bit.ly/3NryiKa

43. The decree-law largely avoids the first criticism by setting out a number of safeguards. See Elleuch Mahdi, 'Kais Saied publishes his electoral decree-law: the features of bottom-up construction become clearer, despite a few notable concessions' (in Arabic), Legal Agenda, 17/09, 2022, https://bit.ly/3PzILWV

44. Abdelmoula Mohamed Rami, 'Tunisia: an electoral law undermined' (in Arabic), Safir Arabi, 12/10, 2022, https://bit.ly/3po2can

45. Fieldwork during the electoral campaign and the first round of elections.

46. Sondage de Sigma Conseil cité par Jeune Afrique, « À Tunis, ce sondage de Sigma qui met le feu aux poudres », 07/02/2023, https://bit.ly/3DSMQ4E

47. Sondage Emrhod - Käis Saied remporterait la présentielle haut la main, Businessnews, 14/06/2022, https://bit.ly/3ZPi0B9

48. Zyed Krichen, 'The results of the first round of local elections: messages from Tunisians' (in Arabic), Le Maghreb, 26/12/2023

49. Communiqué to the Tunisian people, 14/09/2024 (document kindly sent by a Tunisian colleague).

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Mohamed Rami Abdelmoula, 'The 2024 presidential election in Tunisia: 'Crossing over' to where (in Arabic), Safir Arabi, 14/10/2024, https://bit.ly/3YpzKIJ

## Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

## ORCID

Thierry Desrues ID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7097-405X

Eric Gobe ID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1976-2983
<figure><img src="image_37.png" /></figure>

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