Tunisia’s Growing Social Discontent: Drivers, Dynamics, and Prospects

Introduction

Mid-July 2026 saw significant demonstrations in Tunisia protesting repeated power cuts and interruptions to the supply of drinking water. These demonstrations, which coincided with the fifth anniversary of President Kais Saied’s self-coup, took place against the backdrop of a political, social and economic crisis – a crisis that the regime has met with a dogged refusal to cede power, an increasing crackdown on civil liberties, attacks on activists, journalists, and businessmen, and further backsliding from the gains of the 2011 revolution.

Electricity Crisis: Losses and Questions

Short-Term Malfunction or Structural Crisis?

The current crisis is the first of its kind. The country has never previously experienced such extensive disruptions to the electricity supply: outages have always been an unusual occurrence and limited in scope. There has still been no official, detailed explanation of what happened, although the STEG notices imply that the aim of the rolling blackouts is so-called “load-shedding” and that cutting off particular areas is the only way of preventing complete breakdown of the grid.

It seems clear that power generation cannot currently meet consumer demand, which is always at its highest during the summer and in the middle of heatwaves. But such a large shortfall in supply is unprecedented, and the crisis is ongoing – albeit with less intensity – despite the fact that the heatwave has passed and the temperature has fallen.

This is not simply a short-term malfunction and cannot be fixed by alluding in populist fashion to shadowy forces seeking to undermine the government. It requires an objective diagnosis of the sources of the problem, a forward-looking approach, and medium- and long-term planning. It requires sufficient funding, upgrading of dilapidated infrastructure, investment in alternative energies, and a serious strategy for energy security in an unstable region with a fluctuating global market and continuing price rises.

Crisis on the Street

With no electricity and no drinking water, and amid radio silence from the government, night-time demonstrations soon began in a handful of cities in the southeast. It was not long before they spread to most areas of the country. Demonstrators set tyres on fire and blocked roads, demanding improved services and access to electricity and water. Despite the growth of the protests, there were no significant clashes with the security forces, who kept a close eye on the situation but did not intervene. Force was used in only a few cases, in working-class neighbourhoods in the capital and other big cities.

A Creeping Crisis

At the same time, most public enterprises have been struggling, amid rising debts, a lack of funding, mismanagement and underinvestment – making it difficult for them to meet their obligations. Many of these enterprises provide vital services to citizens: water, energy and electricity, public transport, railways, Tunisair, the Central Pharmacy and the Seed Bank.

To be sure, these are complex, structural crises whose roots go back far beyond the Saied presidency – in some cases, to political and economic decisions made many decades ago. However, the statistics show that they have got much worse since the President assumed dictatorial powers, abolished the role of the “intermediary entities” (parties, unions and other organizations), reduced the parliament to a rubber stamp, marginalized skilled administrators, cracked down on business, and adopted a populist rhetoric that blames every crisis on “traitors”, “foreign agents”, “thieves” and “conspirators”.

Sectoral Crises or a Crisis of Government?

The various crises in service provision and the economy overlap with one another and are effectively inseparable. The electricity crisis cannot therefore be separated from the broader political context of the last five years and the populist narratives that paved the way for President Saied’s coup against the constitution: restrictions on party activity, diminished parliamentary oversight, marginalization of elites, empty promises of an end to corruption and reinvestment of the “billions of billions” stolen by politicians and businessmen to achieve development and prosperity in marginalized areas. This sort of rhetoric may be able to demolish old structures, but it is incapable of building anything new.

The deterioration of public services, President Saied’s inability to keep his promises, and the ever-growing list of those targeted for harassment and legal action have shrunk the support base he enjoyed in 2021. Some previously friendly parties and organizations (the Popular Movement, the Tunisian General Labour Union, the Tunisian Human Rights League, etc) have moved gradually towards the opposition. At the same time, popular support for the President has receded – which has been made particularly obvious by the lacklustre attendance at demonstrations organized by his supporters in the capital.

Declining living standards, worsening service provision, and the needs created by these two problems show that the crisis in Tunisia is more complicated than the accounts given by Saied and his pet social media pages would suggest. These accounts seek to absolve the government of any responsibility for the crisis by deploying a populist rhetoric that ignores the problem rather than addressing it head on. The mounting crises that Tunisia is facing are all symptoms of a broader crisis of government. And since there is no indication that the government is likely to change its political ways, and little evidence that it is capable of addressing the problems themselves, they are only likely to get worse. Moreover – with its claim to electoral legitimacy already seriously undermined by much-reduced turnout since the coup – they raise questions about the government’s claim to a legitimacy based on delivery.

A catalyst for demands for change

With the high point of the electricity crisis behind us, the demonstrations have got smaller and fewer in number – for now. But the nature of the crises that the country is experiencing augur further difficulties in the near future, difficulties that may be no less severe than that of mid-July. The beginning of the new school year in September always sees significant price rises, which is likely to put serious pressure on families and on the public bodies that are supposed to provide transport, energy, health and educational services. At the same time, the government seems to have few options for overcoming these crises. All this promises further periodic waves of popular protest and increasing mobilization – not least given the first signs of a new convergence between different political and youth groups calling for Saied’s removal and a return to democracy.

Conclusion

The most recent electricity crisis is not the only crisis that has faced Tunisia since President Saied seized power in 2021. However, it has been more serious and had a greater effect on the dilapidated Tunisian economy and on the daily lives of citizens than those that preceded it – which explains the scale of the popular protests that it triggered and the extent to which it has united a range of social groups behind the demand for a new government that will restart the democratic transition.

With a government incapable of addressing these various crises and a President intent on sticking to his policy of one-man rule and populist crisis management, with no constitutional solutions available, and with the traditional political forces unable – for the moment, at least – to regain their vitality, all indications point to fresh crises in the near future and growing popular unrest as a result.