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Tunisia

Tunisia is a unitary republic in North Africa and the country where the Arab Spring began, when a street vendor's self-immolation in December 2010 triggered protests that forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power within weeks. Tunisia alone among the Arab Spring states built a lasting constitutional transition in the years that followed, adopting a new constitution in 2014, though a 2021 concentration of power in the presidency and a further constitution in 2022 shifted the balance back toward executive authority.

Facts
Founding Year
1956 2
20 March 1956 is Tunisia's independence from France, uncontested and the date Tunisia itself marks as its national day. It is offered as the founding of Tunisian sovereignty. The following year's proclamation of the republic, 25 July 1957, when Habib Bourguiba deposed the Bey of Tunis and became president, changed the head of state's form but not the country's sovereign status, so this entry keeps the earlier independence date rather than the later republican one, the same distinction this atlas draws between Ghana's 1957 independence and its later 1960 conversion to a republic.
Classification
Freedom Status
Electoral Autocracy 1
Connections

Associated With

Tunisia (Britannica), Sources

This source names Tunisia directly: "Britannica country overview of Tunisia, covering its independence from France, the 2011 revolution and its subsequent constitutional history."

Source Tunisia (Britannica)

Governed By

Saied Administration, Governments
Source Kais Saied (Wikipedia)

Practices

Presidential System, Systems of Government
Source Tunisia (Britannica)
Unitary State, Systems of Government
Source Tunisia (Britannica)

Shaped By

Arab Spring, Movements
Source Tunisia (Britannica)
Sources
1. Freedom House: Tunisia (Freedom in the World 2025)
Freedom HouseOverview, Global Freedom Score 42/100 (partly free)
Quote, Overview, Global Freedom Score 42/100 (partly free)
After the ouster of a longtime autocrat in 2011, Tunisia held a series of free multiparty elections, and citizens enjoyed considerable political rights and civil liberties under a constitution promulgated in 2014.
View the Source
2. Tunisia (Britannica)
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Kais Saied (Wikipedia)
Governed By: Saied Administration, Lead sentence
Quote, Governed By: Saied Administration, Lead sentence
who has served as the fifth president of Tunisia since 2019
View the Source
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