Did democracy in Tunisia fail or did it never succeed?

Prime Minister Najla Bouden takes the oath before president Kais Saied at the Carthage Palace on 11 October. Zuma Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved

On 11 October, the Arab world’s first female prime minister was sworn into office in Tunisia. Najla Bouden’s rise to high office from political obscurity made headlines around the world, even though president Kais Saied had already curtailed the prime minister’s powers and arrogated unlimited authority to himself. The only country to emerge as a democratic success story from the so-called Arab Spring protests of 2011, Tunisia now appears to have returned to one-man rule.

In September, Saied set up a system under which he would essentially govern Tunisia by decree, bypassing the 2014 Constitution that the country had proudly adopted after years of painstaking consultations and negotiations. Effectively, Tunisia is back to the authoritarian status it had under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the despot who ruled from 1987 until his f…