Tunisia: Understanding Conflict 2012 - Johns Hopkins School of ...

the main obstacle to be overcome is high levels of public distrust of the out-going regime
(Horowitz 2008, 21).
The other major debate concerns the content of post-transition constitutions with
regard to the configuration of institutions that they create. Understandably, given the even
greater sensitivity to local contexts with respect to content, there are even fewer ‘best
practices’ to follow despite the fact that, in the long-run, the content of a constitution will
have a much bigger impact on its ability to mitigate conflict than the procedure through
which it was reached. There are an endless number of possible configurations, and only
some relevant examples will be mentioned here. For example, Horowitz mentions the
trade-offs associated with the ‘consociational’ model of democracy which aims to
achieve governance through grand coalitions where all major groups are represented
(Horowitz 2008, 3). While this has appealing characteristics, particularly its inclusiveness
and attempt to build consensus, there are some drawbacks to this model as well. Not only
does the policy process typically become very complex, but the willingness of moderate
leaders to form cross-group coalitions can incite a backlash from their own group and,
eventually, lead to the formation of fringe groups which tend to be more extreme.
Where the precise nature of the institutions is under debate, Horowitz concludes
that at the least constitution drafters ought to aim for coherence of design. However, he
notes in parallel that “the process of making constitutions…is much more conducive to
partial or even conflicting innovations than it is to the adoption of coherent designs
whose elements reinforce each other” (Horowitz 2008, 15). This, combined with
Widner’s observation that conflict resolution and constitution writing often espouse
conflicting imperatives (Widner 2008, 1533), highlights the delicacy of the posttransition
constitution-writing process and will help us to identify potential pit-falls in
Tunisia. Indeed, in his paper, Weiner argues that “in societies in transition, efforts to
resolve deep divisions or fundamental disagreements about the nature of society through
constitutional drafting may sharpen political differences and heighten the political
salience of controversial issues or social cleavages” (Weiner 2011, 9).
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