 to today's event on nonviolent mobilization during democratic transition periods. I wanna start by first telling you who I am. My name's Matthew Siebel. I'm a researcher with a nonviolent action program here at USIP and I'll be moderating today's discussion. Before we get there, I wanna start by telling you a little bit about this panel and our panelists. The 2011 revolution in Tunisia and Armenia's 2018 Velvet Revolution are two recent examples of nonviolent protest movements successfully challenging authoritarian governments. There are lots of similarities and differences between these two cases and hopefully we'll get into some of that during today's panel. But one thing that these events share is that these episodes of nonviolent mobilization prompted periods of political transition. So older rulers and old regimes were removed and then new and hopefully democratic regimes needed to emerge in their wake. When we talk about nonviolent protest movements, we often focus on the flashy iconic protest photos when tens of thousands of people are in the streets and then we neglect the political transition periods that follow. This is unfortunate because there are lots of interesting questions that should be going on about these transition periods. How do civil society activists navigate these transition periods? What opportunities and constraints do they face? These are important questions because how pro-democracy forces act during political transition periods, how civil society engages during these transition periods has a lot to do with whether those transition periods wind up producing consolidated democracies or end up producing reversals to authoritarianism. So here today to discuss these issues with us in Armenia, Tunisia and beyond are three really stellar panelists that we're really excited to have here. Ms. Amy Hawthorne is the Deputy Director for Research at the Project on Middle East Democracy. She's an established expert on US foreign policy and democracy assistance following the Arab Spring uprisings. This includes a two-year stint at the State Department where she focused on democracy assistance to Egypt following the 2011 revolution as well as time spent researching these topics at the Atlantic Council and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her Excellency Lilith McCunth is the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to the United States. She was formerly the Majority Leader of the My Step faction in Armenia's National Assembly and also served as the Minister of Culture in 2018. Before her government service, Ambassador McCunth was an active member of Armenia's civil society working to promote democratic reforms via nonviolent methods. And to that end, she was also a Curriculum Fellow at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflicts Just Up the Street from Us. Lastly, Dr. Jonathan Pinkney is the Director of Applied Research at the Horizons Project and was formerly a senior researcher on my team, the Nonviolent Action Program here at USIP, where he spearheaded the multi-year research collaboration with USAID that has culminated in today's event. He is a prolific expert on civil resistance and democratization and has published a number of policy and academic publications, including his recent book From Descent to Democracy, The Promise and Perils of Civil Resistance Transitions. So thank you all very much for being here. We're really happy to have you here today. Before I start things off, I'm actually gonna turn things over to Rosary Tucci, who's the Director of the DRG Center at USAID, who I'm sure we're all very familiar with, to say a little bit more about this panel's origins and the research project that underlies this panel. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. I'm not gonna take too long because I know you really wanna hear more about the findings of the research, but just to pause for a minute, I think it's really important to highlight how in addition to supporting the research, that we are working to incorporate that research directly into our practice in the US government specifically at USAID. And so I've had the pleasure of working with this team closely at USIP and now I'm back in government and so have the pleasure of taking this research and actualizing the recommendations. I am gonna be quick because as many of you know, I am super passionate about this and can spend a lot of time trying to learn more, ask questions and engage, which is what we are going to do here today. So really just to back up, this has been at least a two-year journey, although I feel like USAID and DRL at State have been supporting this type of research for a few years, I wouldn't say long time, but at least the last two years, we've been deep in the research on nonviolent action, including what we're gonna discuss today. We've been so intrigued at USAID by the growing evidence of how nonviolent action can serve as a counterbalance to backsliding. And I think we've got three goals and I just wanna highlight those very quickly. So first and foremost, it's to better understand the tremendous research and evidence that is already out there and growing on how nonviolent action is getting to and consolidating democracy. And I was joking before that we've called scholars, so many scholars to come brief us and just tell about that evidence, just go over it because when you talk about that evidence, eyes light up, right? People are like, I get it, it's there, what do we need to do? And so that socialization process needs to continue. Of course we need to continue to advance the research. We've learned a lot, but there's more and more to do. So we'll keep doing that. What types of support, where, when, what works best? And then lastly, as we continue to learn more, how do we then shift our work to strategically support them in a way, to support movements in a way that doesn't undermine their credibility and efforts? So we must do this and we can do this. So let me pivot now to what we're gonna discuss today. I mean, just first and foremost, today's discussion really touches on issues that are critical to democratic actors and donors like USAID and State Department. We've done a lot of, we've studied the research on how effective nonviolent action is leading to a transition. But I think the big question that we're gonna ask today or find out more about is what happens after. And that's critical in democracy space. How do we, we've got there, but now how do we keep it? How do we sustain it? How do we improve the democratic reforms and consolidation? Okay, so this research, I mean, it's not a given, right? That the democracy will stay by far. Unfortunately, we've seen so many times, it's not sticking. And so I really think we've gotta dive much deeper into this and the case studies today on Tunisia and Armenia will help to do that. So let me just say a quick thank you to our researchers, Jonathan and Matthew and other USIP colleagues. We're really excited to hear more about the findings. Let me just also acknowledge real quick the research process that you all went through because that is also very important to USAID that how we build the evidence is robust, thoughtful, transparent and accessible. We must live by our democratic principles. And so I think you all laid out a model, zooming in, first zooming out, looking at the big picture, trends, challenges, and then zooming into the case studies to figure out how nonviolent actors are responding to the challenges. You started with the comparative studies of the 72 political transitions. And then as I said, dove into the case studies, put the information on a website. So there's transparent data that's accessible. And then what we're gonna hear more about today, the reports that are action oriented. What specifically do we need to do in the US government? We need that type of specificity and direction for this to move effectively and quickly. So let me wrap up there. Let me also thank Amy and Ambassador for sharing your knowledge and experiences with us today. So let me hand it back over to you, Matthew. Thank you. Oh, this is on, cool. One last housekeeping item before we start. I'll start with some moderated questions. I have some questions lined up for our panelists, but around halfway through, we'll shift to audience Q&A. That will happen both in person and virtual. So if you're watching this virtually, there should be a Q&A function on the event webpage where you can go and type questions and we'll try to answer them in real time. Okay, finally, without any further ado, let's start off by talking about this early period of the political transition right after Ben Ali and Sargsyan were removed from power. How did civil society actors, pro-democracy forces in Armenia and Tunisia navigate this early period? It seems like a long time ago for me, but it's really important for us to understand did civil society remain mobilized? Were they engaged with political parties? Did they form new civil society organizations? Was there clear strategy? Give us a sense about how pro-democracy forces moved through this transition period. And I suppose either of you can start. Please, Ambassador. Thank you so much. Thank you for the questions and thank you for the event and hosting us and myself today here. Well, first of all, the aspirations of the non-violent revolution back in 2018 where we were all driven and the Armenian society, Armenian population was driven by the domestic transition and the need for further developing and promoting democracy inside the country. That was driven by the urge of fighting corruption, of having transparent fair and democratic elections, of having to be able to exercise our own rights freely in accordance with the laws and the constitution of the Republic of Armenia. So that's a very important point to make in order to answer your next question because there are always these conspiracy theories of how revolutions are driven and how specifically the revolution in Armenia started. It started by the will of people and the people wanted to be empowered and to have the power to make decisions inside the country, to make decisions about the formation of the government and to have a word to say, to be a true power. So it was not geopolitically driven, it was exclusively domestically driven. What happened after the non-violent revolution, I'll try to be brief, to be able to give a chance to talk to my colleagues as well. But as a result of the non-violent velvet revolution, a government was formed by people who were mostly, well, previously mostly did not have any experience of working in the state institutions. This was both an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. And advantages that the government and the prime minister, Pashinyan, had made a clear decision that in order to fight corruption and in order to start a new track, we need to have new people, nevermind they are going to be inexperienced, but they will also work on themselves in the course of governments. And it was not that all of them were eliminated, I mean all of the people working in the state institutions. But by saying this, I mean that most people, many people participating in the non-violent civil action and the non-violent velvet revolution, those people came to work in the government, work in the parliament, work in different institutions, including helping those people who were not engaged in the governmental positions or legislative positions, those people were engaged in conducting reforms. But one of the most, I mean helping conduct reforms, cooperating with the government, cooperating with the legislative body. But one of the most important things, after the non-violent velvet revolution when the government was changed and it was a transition government for six months, there were SNAP elections. The reason for this was very obvious. In order people to be able to exercise their full power, we need to have SNAP elections so that we are sure who are the or which are the parties that people want to see in the parliament because we're a parliamentary republic and that's how the government is formed and that's how the prime minister, the leader of the country is elected. So the first step was having SNAP elections in six months and then launching massive democratic reforms where civil society was engaged, where they were engaged in working groups, different institutions were a part of, but they were also present to conduct those reforms. Probably this much for the moment. Thank you. Thank you, good morning and thanks so much to USIP for inviting me today and I see some Tunisian friends in the audience who know and live through the experience in Tunisia far more than I did, so I hope they will correct me during the Q and A if I say something that they don't agree with. So it is December 2010 and January 2011, which were the Tunisian revolution, the beginning of the Arab Spring. It does feel like a very, very long time ago and Tunisia is now in a very different place, but going back to those early days, those early weeks and months, it is important to think back on that because there of course as in any revolution, any political transition, there were things that happened, decisions that were made early on that did set a certain path and led Tunisia down in one direction and not another. From the very, very beginning, on January 14th, when the dictator Ben Ali was ousted and fled the country, it was from the very beginning of the transition, there was this divide and there are a lot of divides in Tunisia, so I'm gonna oversimplify, but there was definitely divide between the people who started the revolution and were actually leading it and participating in it for weeks before much of the rest of the country joined in and the sort of political elite, people from the old regime and people who had been in the opposition or in civil society during the dictatorship, so they didn't have rights and freedoms, but they were kind of part of the political scene. So there was a divide from the very beginning about what is this transition about? What should Tunisia become and what are the priorities? So the people who led the revolution and participated in the early weeks and pivotal weeks of the uprising across Tunisia that of course started in the deprived interior region of the country, their priorities, broadly speaking, were really about economic justice and end to economic and social exclusion. There was a lot of anger about police brutality and it's not to say that those protesters were opposed to democracy. I think what they were focused on though was really this idea of justice and the have nots and the deprived people in Tunisia being no longer excluded. So then the other group of people were formed a broad consensus around the idea of trying to create some kind of liberal democracy and create a new political system, get the new political system that would be democratic in place first and then maybe address the demands of the protesters and the socioeconomic demand. So from the very beginning, there was that divide. So in the weeks and months after the fall of the dictator, we saw actually continued mobilization, continued protests organized by those who had been driving the revolution in the beginning and there were civil society actors, leftist factions and they did a lot of mobilization and they wanted a complete revolution like a dismantling of the old system, a guarantee that the dictatorship would not return and figures of the dictatorship would not return to power and they wanted economic and social justice and the people who basically took control, some of them were opposed to those demands and some of them thought that that was a secondary priority. So from the very beginning, you saw continued street mobilization and then opposition or co-optation of that street mobilization by political actors who were very focused on forming an elite political consensus. And that elite political consensus that took Tunisia through its first years of its transition from dictatorship was very successful in certain regards. They did create a democratic system, especially on paper, a democratic constitution, democratic laws, they achieved a lot but those socioeconomic demands, the frustration about corruption, the frustration about police brutality, the feeling of exclusion and marginalization, those grievances never went away even though as years went on the mobilization of those groups was maybe less centralized and more kind of sporadic and more decentralized. And that takes us up to the summer of 2021 when Tunisia facing a kind of double whammy of a worsening economic crisis and a devastating hit from the coronavirus pandemic. I was telling colleagues before the session that a lot of people don't remember, don't know that in summer of 2021, Tunisia was one of the countries in the world that was the hardest hit by the pandemic. And for several weeks, it had the highest death rate per capita of any country in the world. So the pandemic was devastating and the health system was collapsing, the government was ineffectual, this government that had been formed through this new political design, through free elections that had rights and liberties and all of that, they were unable to respond. And the economy was getting worse and worse and worse and those things came together and basically created a lot of public support for an end either to the democratic experiment or to phase one of the revolution as we might have it. So that cleavage and it continues to exist today and shape what is happening in Tunisia, that divide between political and civil rights and for kind of formal political democracy and socioeconomic rights and what should be the priority. Okay, there's a lot to unpack there. I hope we get into talking about this, the difference between kind of prioritizing socioeconomic demands versus prioritizing to democratic reforms. That seems like an important difference. But for the moment, I wanna step back and try and get some broader context about transition periods more generally. Jonathan, what does your cross-national research tell us about the relationship between civil society mobilization during transition periods and how those transitions unfold? Thank you so much, Matthew. And I just wanna thank all of you for being here today. It's really wonderful for me to be back at USIP after a few months away to see a lot of familiar faces out there in the audience. So thanks for the invitation and thanks to USAID for supporting this really critical research over so many years and to my colleagues for being here as well. So the evidence is really clear that if you want a political transition to end in democracy, you want to start it with nonviolent resistance. You want to start it with mass civic mobilization that gets people involved in the political system that elevates new kinds of elites as the ambassador was mentioning in Armenia, people who have been outside of previous structures of political corruption coming into positions of political influence. That nonviolent resistance puts transitions on the path to democracy. But that path isn't guaranteed. One out of five political transitions that is initiated through nonviolent resistance doesn't even achieve a minimal level of democracy. And among those sort of four out of five cases that do end up at least a minimal amount of democracy, there's wide variation in the quality, the level of human rights protections and various other measures related to that. And one of the key factors that explains that variation in you have a transition initiated through nonviolent resistance, what it's going to look like at the end are exactly these patterns of civic mobilization during the transition period. Because as my colleagues speaking about Armenia and Tunisia know very well, transitions are times of great political uncertainty where the rules of the political game are open for debate and where elites from various factions are jockeying for position in whatever those new rules of the political game are going to be. And so it's absolutely crucial that during this jockeying for position, during this time of uncertainty, the voices of the people are still engaged in that shaping process and new elites are being held accountable to promises of greater democracy, economic change and human rights protections. So we see the number one predictive factor of whether a transition is initiated, when a transition is initiated through nonviolent resistance, whether it will end in democracy is if there are high levels of civic mobilization during the political transition period. So that's absolutely crucial. And this is a particular problem across many transitions because a lot of revolutions initiated through nonviolent resistance come together around so-called negative coalitions. They're mobilized by what people don't like rather than by what they want for the future. And so once sort of an old regime is out of power it can be quite difficult to maintain those coalitions to continue to push for a democratic future. So we see across a number of transitions a real drop-off. There's a high period of mobilization maybe at the very beginning of the transition but as time goes on that mobilization really falls away and you can see sort of the coming back to positions of influence of more anti-democratic forces. But this isn't the only challenge of course as I think was referenced particularly in the case with Tunisia where you have this moment of uncertainty that we have in a political transition can also lend itself to sort of a maximized all or nothing politics where you have kind of back and forth struggles that escalate and can potentially turn to violence over time. And as these struggles escalate that can also kind of undermine popular faith in democracy and lead to a hunger for a return to some kind of authoritarian system. So these sort of two key things it's critical to maintain high levels of mobilization and to avoid that shift to kind of all or nothing maximalist politics. And those are sort of the most influential factors that we see influencing levels of democracy at the end of a political transition. Awesome, so good and bad news, good in that nonviolent mobilization is very powerfully associated with democratic consolidation but the kind of bitter pill to swallow is that there are challenges along the way. I wanna ask Amy and Ambassador McCoon, have these two challenges that Jonathan is talking about here, the drop-off in mobilization and this all or nothing politics where things seem like a zero sum game, have those manifested in Tunisia and Armenia, what has that, have those challenges looked like? Or have pro-democracy forces kind of overcome those challenges? Sure, thank you for the questions. Well, right after the revolution, the nonviolent revolution in Armenia, a lot of professional groups, separate people representing different organizations, including state organizations, emerged with the demands, with protests from the government, but not demanding what they did before but trying to draw attention to solve the problems that had accumulated for years. To the extent that there were even questions, issues raised by people that came from the beginning of the 1990s. So people saw an opportunity here and we were viewing it, I'm saying we because back then I was in the government, we were viewing that from the perspective of, you know, trying to help people, trying to meet their expectations, what they had expected from the change of the government, what they had expected from, you know, pushing forth democracy and being heard. And that's where those professional groups emerged and with the demands that they had and legitimate demands, some of them it was possible to solve in the beginning, some of them it was not possible because it takes time. We also had ecological activists demanding, you know, protesting against mines and mining. And now when we see what's happening in, for example, NK in Latching Corridor and we see the so-called Azerbaijan ecological activists, we see clearly that those are not activists because we know what activism looks like and what a demand looks like, what is genuine and what not. But coming back to Armenia, that was the main challenge because those small protesting groups were trying to achieve whatever they could not before and the government was trying to satisfy that. Prioritizing democratic reforms was key and essential because we understood that, and also I think it's on the level of citizens and on the level of civic activism, we all bear responsibility for the sovereignty of the country and having true institutional democracy and strong institutional democracy ensures, first of all, electoral transparency and independence and people to always have the power to decide the future of the country which ensures the statehood and the independence of the country. And that's one of the key elements that we were focusing on and we eventually managed within two years to implement electoral reforms and change the electoral code. But also another challenge was, especially in the light that democracy is always being contradicted with strength. So having democracy does not always mean being strong and what the government until now is trying to push forth that those things are not contradictable, those things are complementary. And democracy does not mean weakness, democracy means predictability and security because predictable countries are peaceful countries and that's the reason that also Armenia wants to have more democracies in the region. We would love to see more democracies in the region because that means more predictability and more stability in the region. But that's the path that we have undertaken, we cannot decide instead of the other countries. That's our vision, that's our understanding how democracy looks like. We also think that it's important that democracies support each other, especially in the light when institutional reforms and as we all mentioned, people that come to power and that have not experienced prior to the changes it's important to support institutional strengthening of democracies and crystallizing that so that no matter what happens because if you want to make sure that from now on it's the people who are going to decide the future no matter what government comes to power so that there are certain things that never go back again and that's the power of institutionalizing those things. So those are basically the challenges that right now Armenia is facing at the moment. I cannot claim that whatever, as you know, there are not ready-made recipes. What works in one country, it does not necessarily work in another country. You may want to implement one reform and that reform may not turn as effective as you would want it to be. It does not mean that there was something maligned. It means that you see them wherever it didn't work and you have the opportunity to fix it. You have the opportunity to change your approach and that's the beauty of democracy because there are not, if I did this no matter if I'm wrong or I'm right or if it worked or didn't work, I'm not gonna change it. No, democracy means also flexibility and you have that power to try and to change it and to implement so that it best serves the interests of the people and the interests of the country, of the statehood. That's what we're focusing on at the moment. We, by saying we, I mean the government, we get criticism of course, we get criticism from the civil society sometimes too and that's normal. That's the process of moving forth. That's how it works. Cooperation, sometimes debates which works and finding the best way to build a country that we want to have which is independent, democratic, sovereign state. Very interesting remarks by the ambassador. I like the optimism that's coming from you because we don't have that in the region that I work on very much, Middle East and North Africa. When it comes to Tunisia, the two issues of civic mobilization and zero-sum game or not are really two key, key issues to describing and understanding what has happened in Tunisia over the past 12 years. There was a pretty high level of civic mobilization that continued right after the revolution as I referred to before. So from early 2011 through 2013 and there were a lot of mass protests and ongoing protests by different groups. There were protests over many things by many parties but I would say generally speaking some of the most important civic mobilization before Tunisia's first elections were held were around this issue of whether there should be a complete overhaul of the system and a true revolution from the bottom up kind of a people's revolution a cleansing of the whole system and the creation of a totally new not just political but also economic system. There were people who were adamant about that and really distrusted the interim government because the interim government maybe in contrast to the recent experience in Armenia included at least initially a lot of people who had served in the dictatorship. They came out as supporters of democracy after the dictator Ben Ali left the country and they did have experience. They were technocratic elites or political elites so they took power or they were running the country and shaping the transition to a large extent. There was a lot of distrust among some Tunisians about can we trust these people or are they going to bring the change that we want? Again with an emphasis, real emphasis on dignity, socioeconomic rights, economic and social justice which as they said was not necessarily the priority of those political elites who were trying to create a political democracy at that time. After the 2011 elections which were Tunisia's first free and fair elections and when Anaheim the Islamist party that had been banned during the dictatorship and totally suppressed came out and won those elections then we started to see a protest culture and civic mobilization against the Anaheim led government and that's when Tunisia moved into a new phase of this divide which is not quite the right term for it but just for simplification's sake Islamist versus secular. There are certainly non-secular Tunisians who oppose Anaheim so it's more complicated than that but broadly speaking. So then we saw that protest culture. Then we saw protests of that nature kind of diminished for a while after Anaheim made a deal made a power sharing agreement with kind of the old secular guard in 2013, 2014. Since that time we have seen a protest culture continue in Tunisia. I think that's really important to keep in mind. There are a lot of protests in Tunisia. For the most part though, most of them have been notable that they're often in many cases they're localized. They're around a specific set of issues. They are around driven by specific interest groups around particular regions of the country and so those have been very intense and in some cases quite influential in their local regions but we haven't seen the same kind of mass national mobilization that we saw in January, 2011. Protests continue to this day against President Kaysayed who was the elected president of Tunisia but seized pretty much all power for himself and dismantled the previous power sharing system in July, 2021. We continue to see, in fact we'll see on January 14th the anniversary of the revolution or how many people mark there's now a debate about what is the right, even the anniversary of the revolution. Is it December 17th or January 14th? But we may see protests, big protests against economic conditions, against Kaysayed but these protests there's a lot of divides and they haven't been able to mobilize a broad coalition of people to change the government or change the political system. That broad coalition that we saw in January, 2011 where all these different groups came together to agree on one thing which was get Ben Ali, President Ben Ali, the dictator, get him out, remove him and his family from power and so we haven't seen that same sort of broad mobilization that brings in people under kind of one goal so the divisions continue. In terms of zero-sum game, I think that the fact that the Tunisian political leadership wanted to avoid a zero-sum game from the very beginning they were very interested in compromise and in forming political consensus. There were many understandable reasons driving that thought process and it served Tunisia very well in certain respects. It allowed free elections to be held relatively quickly. It allowed this really democratic rights oriented, rights infused constitution to be drafted through a very consensual and participatory process by the National Constitutional Assembly so there were a lot of advantages to the fact that these different political factions in Tunisia who were kind of the new leadership who were very divided, Islamists, leftists to a certain extent, people sort of from the old guard who now claim to be embracing democracy, there were a lot of power sharing agreements but what happened over time, so that was a key ingredient of Tunisia's success for many years. It's political transition success to a certain extent. But then, what happened was a lot of Tunisians started to feel that that political consensus had turned into basically elite bargains to stay in power for themselves and to keep power for themselves and to make deals with the other side and to neglect popular demands for really farther reaching change especially on the economic front and they basically weren't governing very well and that kind of consensus approach turned into gridlock, paralysis, lack of action and a widespread public sentiment in Tunisia kind of against political parties and against the parliament, the freely elected democratic parliament. So what was once part of Tunisia's success turned into part of the roots of the demise of the democratic transition and the dismantling of many of the democratic, political democratic gains that Tunisia had so impressively achieved in the years after 2011. So what you have now is I think a new leader, a president in Tunisia who's creating a new system in which he has dominant and overwhelming power, what we would generally call a dictator and many people see him as wanting a zero sum game. He's not interested in negotiating. He's not interested in compromise. He shows disdain for most of the political sort of leadership, post-revolution leadership which he sees as discredited and ineffective and that message resonates with some Tunisians for sure. There's a lot of cynicism and frustration. So now we're back to a zero sum situation. I think there's still that flame in Tunisia that's still alive of compromise and power sharing and coalition building, but we'll see if the conditions, if there's enough oxygen at some point in the future to kind of allow that flame to grow. I don't think it's fully extinguished, but right now we are not in a moment of, we are in a moment I think of zero sum politics, unfortunately for Tunisian democracy. Okay, actually I want to follow up with you Amy really quickly on this mobilization drop-off problem. So I recently saw some interesting aerobrometer data that shows that Tunisians, I mean this has been true since the start of the revolution, even before then I assume, but Tunisians are consistently supportive of democracy. They still prefer democracy to any other form of government, but at the same time they were also really supportive of Kaisaid's decision to suspend parliament, turnout for the constitutional referendum that consolidated his executive control was pretty low. The recent parliamentary electoral turnout was abysmally low. So can you help us make sense of, given that the Tunisian transition started, both the Tunisian and Armenian transitions started with such clear popular mobilization, how do you reconcile this kind of consistent preference for democracy with an unwillingness to stop what is I think pretty clearly a democratic reversion here, or authoritarian reversion in Tunisia? Wow, that is such a complicated question, but my best attempt to answer it simply would be, in a simple way would be that a significant number of Tunisians still support President Kaisaid and his power grab and what he's doing. That number has been dropping, declining steadily since July 25th, 2021, when he had his power grab. That was kind of maybe the high moment of his popularity and a lot of Tunisians, I think, saw him as a savior, someone who could finally break this gridlock of these feckless politicians who were constantly doing backroom deals and bickering in parliament and even physically fighting in parliament and unable to actually address the economic and health crisis that were happening in the country. So his support is declining, but he still has a base, but I think at least with Tunisians I've talked to, there to be fair, there is a contingent within Tunisian sort of political Tunisian society that never wanted the dictatorship to go away and was very comfortable with a return to authoritarian governance, but I don't think that that's necessarily the main thing that's driving support for Kaisaid. I think a lot of Tunisians who initially supported him very enthusiastically and remember he was elected in a landslide election in the fall of 2019. So he actually has that electoral legitimacy and he used that to craft what he thought should have been done in Tunisia from the very beginning from January 2011. So he's basically trying to erase what was done and go back and start over in his own sort of esoteric way. So I think that there are Tunisians who they believe or they hoped that what Kaisaid was doing was not to dismantle democracy, but to fix it, to improve it, to restart it. And we've seen that this is a discourse that autocrats or people with leaders with autocratic aspirations use in many contexts. They say, what's happened before was a mess, it was terrible, but I'm going to fix it and I'm going to restore democracy. And so I think there was some hope among some Tunisians that he actually was going to do that. And I think that people were so frustrated. Again, I think it's really impossible to understate the fact that Tunisia, even before its current dire economic crisis, has been in the economic slump and declining economic conditions since 2011. So that's been the backdrop of everything that was achieved politically. The constitution, a really open new NGO legal framework, rights and freedoms, all those things were very real. The Tunisians did achieve them, but the economic situation kept getting worse and worse. So I think there are some people who actually want an authoritarian ruler, a strong man. I think there's more people who were disillusioned by what happened before and want something new. There are some people who I guess believe that Qaisaid will somehow restore democracy of a different form. And then I think this is most important to understanding the situation today. Qaisaids popularity is declining, but so is the popularity of every other political figure in the country. And according to polls that I've seen, a lot of Tunisians say, who do we want? We want none of the above, none of them. We're disillusioned and angry and frustrated with this whole post-revolution political class, opposition or government. And so as long as there's not someone who comes along who can galvanize and mobilize people and a charismatic leader, it doesn't matter for Qaisaid, at least in the short term, if his popularity is declining, as long as there's no clear alternative to him. So that's I think where Tunisia is right now. Okay, this is a great segue into a topic that we've kind of been circling around here about the relationship between civil society and their engagement with transitional governments. So Ambassador McCoon has indicated to us that the new government that was staffed in Armenia came from civil society and perhaps that was less true in Tunisia based on Amy's comments. Jonathan, can you give us a general sense about how civil society activists, like what are the advantages and disadvantages of engagement with government? What does that look like? Yeah, thanks Matthew. It's a really great question. And I think something that, I was struck by something that Ambassador McCoon said before where the transition provided this opportunity for the first time for a lot of people who had been shut out of political power to have the opportunity to enter government, to be able to actually achieve some of their goals. And that's I think the real benefit of direct engagement with government during times of political transition. That you have people coming into positions of influence who often are, as I mentioned at the outset, not embedded in old systems of corruption, not embedded in kind of the way that things have always been. And so you can see a real potential for political change. But there is a potential pitfall of, as Amy was bringing up before, new sort of elite bargains that you have kind of people enter, you have people entering political power and it becomes sort of a new set of elites who also shut out kind of popular will at the same time. And this is particularly the case if some other transitions that I've studied where essentially all of the talented people in civil society are sort of part of the revolution and they all enter government at once during the transition and there's sort of nobody left outside to hold the new government accountable. And so I think what we see in looking at a broader population of transitions is the real need for a spectrum of different kinds of engagement. That it is really one crucial way in which these political transitions can foster democracy is through people entering government from civil society. But it's also crucial to have that accountability outside as well. And so having kind of across a rich civil society ecosystem, this broad spectrum of different ways that people engage is I think really, really crucial. And I mean, I think I would be curious to hear from Ambassador McCoon's about how you made that decision for yourself about whether to enter government, entering government after the revolution and conversations that you had with others about that decision making process. Thank you, thank you for that question. Well, I was socially active since I was a student. My first, the first movement that I participated in was called in the benefit of science and education. And that movement, that youth movement, that student movement succeeded. And that's the first time I figured out that peacefully, without any violence, exercising your right as a citizen, it's possible to achieve things. That was the first thing that struck me that I wanted to do this. And I got engaged in politics back then. It was 2004 or five. I made a decision for myself that I'm not going to join a governmental party. That was my decision, that I was going to be in the opposition. I was socially active and I have known, I mean, with the, well, in 2012, starting from 2012, we have been a sort of a team with the prime minister's party and the prime minister's team. It was established as a party later. So it's not that I was an outsider then. I was both socially and civically and politically active. So that's the reason that after the revolution, I also agreed to join the government. Back then it was the transition government for six months and then I got elected into the parliament. Yeah. But I think it is also difficult and what I observed, the people who were in civic activism and joined the governmental bodies and they had to make decisions. It was also what I observed, it was my personal observation that it's really difficult to shift your positioning and to not act as a person who is criticizing, but actually, whatever you're criticizing, you need to take decisions about that. So quite often at times, I myself was observing such a situation and we were reminding ourselves, okay, we're not in the opposition anymore, we're not civic activists anymore and we need to take decisions, whatever we disagree with. Whether it's an easy one or it's a tough one, that's our decision already. And that's where I figured that it was hard for the people who were coming from, the background was only an exclusively civic activism and not any political background. I was observing that that decision was difficult because it's like it comes, okay, you see something you disagree with, it's like opposing, but what we need to do is, okay, what we need to do, what is the decision. So that was interesting. It was, this is a process that I think we as a society, not people who are in the government in the decision making process, but it's a process that we are all going through together as citizens, ordinary citizens, going to the polling booth and taking a decision for the future and knowing exactly that this is not going to be rigged. It's going to be their choice and they're responsible for the vote that they are custing when they are custing the ballot. So that's the thing. I hope I addressed whatever you wanted to hear. That was great. So we're coming up on audience Q and A time, but I'm gonna exert my powers here and ask one final question about geopolitics. I wanna try and understand how, or put these two cases in conversation with one another. So Ambassador McCoon, I mean, the elephant in the room for Armenia seems to be geopolitics. Armenia exists in a really difficult political environment. It has an ongoing decades long territorial dispute that recently flared up in 2020. It has a tense relationship with Turkey that Armenia is trying to normalize now, has this very important and complicated relationship that it needs to manage with Russia. So how do these external pressures, how did they influence civic mobilization during this transition period? You know, as I mentioned, I have been active since 2003, 2004 and I do not remember, I personally do not remember, and if I'm wrong, please correct me, any mass movements, social movements, political mass political protests that were geopolitically driven. They were all domestically driven. And it was about, you know, eliminating corruption. It was about transparency of the elections. It was about ecology. It was about other different things, but was never geopolitically driven. And the non-violent Velvet Revolution of 2018 was not an exclusion and was not an exception in this sense. So it's the genuine interest and it's the genuine wish of the people of Armenia, of the citizens of Armenia to build a country where we are the decision makers, where we are the ones who are gonna decide things, where we demand from our own government and our judicial system and the other institutions to function properly. And I want to remind you, as a proof of what I'm saying, also what happened after 2020. In 2020, we had a brutal war, as you all know, well, with the outcomes that we had. And obviously, there was a domestic turmoil in the country. There was a domestic turmoil in the country. People were upset with the outcome of the war. There was also a political element there in some of the cases, in the case of some of the political parties. But the strong stance of the government and the parliament back then, and I was the majority leader back then, our strong stance was that there cannot be and a step back from democracy. And no matter how temptation is high and no matter that personal and physical security is at stake, we're not stepping back. And that decision was made by the whole political majority. That decision was made by the prime minister and by the government. And after some time, after the war was, the ceasefire was on November 9th, 2020. And in June 20, we already had, on June 20, we already, 2021, we already had snap elections. And everyone was anticipating that the prime minister's party is going to lose. Our determination back then was that those elections need to be transparent. Those elections need to get the assessment of the international community, the way they did during the snap elections or after the snap elections in 2018. And that's the only way to ensure that we are going to have a democratic state and to ensure that we're going to have a sovereign state. Partly those assessments that the prime minister's party and the prime minister is not going to win was conditioned by also the fact that especially after the result of the war talking about peace and talking about the normalization of the relationships with the neighbors was not a popular thing to do. But that was the campaign and that was the commitment of the political majority. That was the commitment of the prime minister. And that's the reason that people were saying that it's not going to be reelected. But the snap elections back in 2021 were again assessed by all the international organizations, by all the countries that they were transparent, fair and democratic elections, and he got reelected. And this is how we envision the democracy. Why am I especially mentioning it? Because back then I remember that there were conversations and talks that there should not be re-elections, there should not be snap elections, but there should be a transition, well, passing along the power to someone else. And that was the pressure that the political majority back then got. So basically what it means, so how the system works. Partists get elected into the parliament, the majority gets formed, and then they present candidates for the prime minister who is the leader of the country and then they vote for the prime minister. So this is how the system works. What some of the parties wanted back then is that, okay, no elections. We had elections in 2019, 2018, we don't need anymore. You just, the majority needs to vote for another person. So basically not going back to the citizens and asking what do you think about the future of the country, what do you think who's going to be in charge of governance, but deciding as a majority who the next. And we said, no, we're not going to do that. We don't have the right to do that. That was hard, especially given the pressure and again, including under physical security threats. We said, no, we're not stepping back. And that's about our personal commitment as people, as citizens of the Republic of Armenia. And the citizens went to the polling stations and made a choice. Yeah, they could have voted for a different party, they could have voted for a different candidate. They made their decision. And the respect of the decision of the citizens is what makes a country something. That's the first step. That's the first step. And again, temptation is high, especially under physical threat, but no. So that's about us. That's not about any other country, any third country. That's about us wanting and desiring and envisioning how we want, what kind of a country we want to have. And whether, what we were preaching for, we're standing strong for that, including as citizens, or we're not. That's it. Yeah, this observation that security threats are often used as a cudgel to justify restrictions on civil liberties or democratic rollbacks is really important. And I'm glad that Armenia seems to be navigating that challenge. One last follow up for Amy here, just to put these cases in conversation. I think that one of the things that most interests me about the comparison between Armenia and Tunisia is that I think Armenia's international environment is pretty challenging. And yet it is soldiering along with this democratic transition, whereas at least as far as my first cut at the thing would be Tunisia's international environment seems relatively favorable, at least in the early period of the transition. Maybe that's changed over time, but things kind of still fell off the wagon. So can you correct me if I'm mistaken or tell me a little bit more about how Tunisia's international environment shaped its transition period? Well, it's, again, so interesting to just hear about Armenia and think about the significant differences with Tunisia, because in contrast to what I understand the situation in Armenia to be or previously to be, Tunisia has not been the focus of geopolitical competition. And it's been the focus of some regional competition within the Middle East and North Africa, but certainly not anywhere to the degree that we saw in the Syrian Civil War, Libya, Tunisia's neighbor, Yemen, or even Egypt. And this has really been or was for a long time, I think quite a blessing for Tunisia, was, yes, some support in the international community, but also the absence of powerful geopolitical spoilers. And that, I think, was something very fortuitous for Tunisia in at least the first 10 years of its democratization process, that it wasn't contending with aggressive neighbors and wars and geopolitical competition right around it. In terms of international support for Tunisia's democratic transition or democratization process, which I personally believe ended on July 25th, 2021 when the president violated the constitution and engineered an unconstitutional power grab, just stating that for the record. That's my view. A lot of Tunisians don't agree with me. But up until that point, I would say that the international environment for Tunisia's democratization process was benign, too mildly supportive. So the U.S. and Europe, very important international partners of Tunisia and key European countries in particular, of course France, Italy, Germany, there was a lot of support for the Tunisian democratic experiment. And I would say pretty immediate support. Like I was actually working in the Obama administration at the time of the Tunisian revolution and the U.S. government to its credit, like immediately pivoted from a working with, or trying to work with the dictatorship that it didn't really support strongly at all that certainly wasn't opposing and pivoted to saying, this is what the Tunisian people have chosen and we're gonna support them as they go on this path. Where I think international support has fallen short is that I personally feel that there hasn't been enough understanding among U.S. government and European governments throughout all these years of Tunisia's post Ben Ali experience in just how important kind of the deteriorating socioeconomic conditions are to shaping people's views and many people's disillusionment with the democratic experiment in Tunisia. I think you've seen some significant well-meaning and well-targeted support for Tunisia but you've also seen some lip service. There's hardly been, or at least as far as I know, there's been a lack of U.S. focus on the issue of corruption for many years, which was like something that really angered and animated and drove a lot of Tunisian sentiment about the post-dictatorship period that corruption was not being dealt with. It was actually getting worse. Political leadership was not taking action against it and I remember briefing an Obama administration official after I left government and I had just made a trip to Tunisia and saying every meeting I had out of 50 meetings, the number one issue that every Tunisian mentioned was corruption and this person kind of dismissed that. I think because there were so many other things going on in Tunisia and just with the transition itself that maybe it was understandable why U.S. and European officials didn't really understand how deep the grievances were about corruption and the lack of successive Tunisian governments to deal with that issue was breeding a lot of anger. Now what I think we've seen since the coup, since the power grab of July 2021 is we've seen very lackluster and empty support for a return to Tunisia's democratic experiment. I think we've seen in large part underneath the rhetoric, both Europe and the United States kind of adjusting to the new reality of Kaisaid's new autocracy, these trying to form, paying some lip service to rights and freedoms and democratic procedures but really not putting very heavy pressure on him for different reasons. I mean there are if you talk to U.S. and European officials they have their explanation for why that's the case but it's been kind of a, I would say a soft support for Tunisia's democratization and then a soft acceptance of its kind of return to what seems to be an autocratic path which is most unfortunate in my view. Got it, okay. I will finally stop asking questions now and with the remaining time available to us open it up for an audience Q and A. So let's start with anybody here. Right here in the third or fourth row, there's a mic behind you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Rebecca Aberg, International Foundation for Electoral Systems. During protest movements, marginalized peoples often are a part of that and really important to kind of making sure that a democratic transition does indeed happen and I'm curious to know from your experience, I know in Armenia, for example, women with disabilities had a pop bringing protest that they did alongside kind of the broader social movement to get some attention to that protest movement. But as the transitions have happened, have you seen sort of a crystallization of the rights of marginalized peoples like women or persons with disabilities or other people or are you seeing something else happen? Are they able to increase their political voice as the democratic transition is happening? Thank you. Thank you. Can I start? Yes, thank you for the question. I want to underscore that right after the revolution, we paid particular attention to engaging, including marginalized group in the governance process. We had a minister with disability. We were trying to engage as many people as possible, creating conditions for them and eliminating the obstacles that would physically also be hard for them to be a part of the governance process. So we paid truly a particular attention to that and part of our reforms was directed to that. Part of our reforms was initiated to make their lives easier in the country and make them more inclusive in the society. So yes, I can tell you confidently that we're working and we're still working in that direction. Thank you. This is such an excellent question and such a fascinating one. It's actually something that myself and a couple of co-authors have been, we've been working on some research related to this specifically. Recognizing exactly as you said, the key role that people from marginalized communities often play during these revolutionary moments. We were particularly interested in, there's a lot of research that I mentioned before on this connection between nonviolent resistance and then democracy at kind of a high institutional level, but what does that actually mean for sort of the most marginalized? The paper is not published yet, but I'd be happy to share it with you if you're curious. We do some statistical analysis looking at transitions initiated through nonviolent action. And what we find is very much exactly as the ambassador illustrated so well in the case of our media, that particularly in transitions where those marginalized groups played a really key role, we see really significant increases in political inclusion across, we look at three different dimensions, gender, race and class, and see really significant improvements across all three of those dimensions relative to transitions initiated through nonviolent resistance where the marginalized community didn't play a role or transitions initiated through other means. So we do see a positive impact and that participation themselves by the marginalized groups is a really central part of that. Shaskar Bayer Lee with the Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University and also a former staff person here at USIP. I'm torn between two questions, so I'm going to throw them both out and see which one you would like to answer because they're relevant to both countries. One question relates to what the previous audience member asked, which is not so much about marginalized populations but about youth. Youth are always drivers of nonviolent movements for change, including for democracy. So my question is where are young people now positioned in your countries in terms of mobilization and in terms of engagement? And are they pulled into this zero sum game by various forces in the countries? The other question, so please choose one because I can't ask two, that's not fair. The other question has to do with diaspora. In nonviolent movements, diaspora often can play a very important role and both in both countries there are large diaspora outside of the countries in Tunisia more so in Europe and Armenia all over the world. So I'm curious as to what you think the diaspora's role can be in a constructive way to support democratic transitions after nonviolent movements have succeeded. Thank you. Thank you for your questions. I'll take the youth one, maybe Ambassador can speak to the diaspora one. It's always hard to generalize because I don't think youth in any country including Tunisia or Monolith there's class and regional and all kinds of differences but broadly speaking I do feel confident in saying that it seems that youth in Tunisia today, many youth are disillusioned, angry, frustrated, very much apathetic and cynical about the political system and leaving Tunisia or wanting to leave Tunisia. This is a phenomenon that is not new for Tunisia. I'm wanting to leave the country and find employment in Europe for example but we are seeing I just know anecdotally and I've read some media reporting on this there's an upsurge of people leaving the country in any way they can both among elite sort of professional class looking for any opportunity they can find outside the country they don't see a future for themselves in Tunisia right now and people who are less economically or educationally privileged trying to leave in any way they can so that is I would say the headline about Tunisia youth right now disillusioned, cynical about the political system such as it is and not seeing a future for themselves in the country and wanting to build their lives elsewhere it's really discouraging. Thank you I'll address the question about diaspora as you know we have a huge Armenian diaspora across the world including in the United States and we're very proud to say that diaspora, Armenian diaspora has been always very vocal and has been very active including during the early democratization processes then during the nonviolent velvet revolution trying to also raise their voicing that they support democratization process inside Armenia of course given the fact that political decisions are the responsibility regarding the state of the Republic of Armenia or the responsibility of the government of the Republic of Armenia it makes for the diaspora and the government difficult to actively and closely engage to share the perspectives et cetera so there is this thing which is a very thin and subtle line but what I acknowledge is that especially the issues that are a humanitarian character issues that require attention from across the world to see what's happening and as you have raised the question it gives me an opportunity to talk on what's happening right now with the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh who are under blockade at the moment by the so-called ecological activists of Azerbaijan and I'm saying by the so-called ecological activists because it's very easily proven that it's very easily demonstrated that they are not in fact ecological activists so those humanitarian issues and drawing the attention of the world that no matter where people leave and what corner of the world those people cannot be deprived of food security of social security of physical security under any circumstance under any excuse so I think regarding especially those issues humanitarian issues this is where the Armenian statehood and diaspora can very factibly cooperate to raise awareness and attract drag attention of the world and convince that this needs to be stopped, thank you. Chaska I'll actually make a brief plug really quickly our team has recently done some work on youth and nonviolent action and we're publishing a report with USAID actually based on this same two-year research project so stay tuned for that that'll pop up on the website soon. We're running out of time here but I wanna give the online viewers a chance because I know some people have posted questions. Daniela can you by any chance read them? We have two questions. The first is the transition to democracy can be limited if the democratic foundations are not laid in accordance with human rights. Can the constitution be the beginning of the foundation for democracy? Second question, are there any lessons for supporting positive civic participation or activism in context where space for such action is closing? What role if any can the international community play? So closing civic space and a question about whether the constitution is the starting place for democracy or the product? It can be the foundation. Yeah, if you don't mind I'll start addressing it from my personal perspective. I'm not a lawyer so don't judge me very critically but I have been in the legislative body where we were facing the dilemma where to start with. What is the right place to start with? Because if you genuinely want to do things, want to change things but you also don't want to harm the institutions, you don't want to have the adverse effect so you need to act very carefully and especially constitution is something that needs to be treated really, really carefully. So given also the fact that after such drastic transitions new people come in that are professional in their own fields but state governance requires consciousness and very careful approach. You cannot harm and it cannot justify it that you wanted to do something good but it turned out to be something really catastrophe or something really, really harmful. So my point would be no, that's not the place to start with. First of all, if there are, because we can have, we can introduce laws and see and test whether they work effectively or they do not work. And in the course of this process we will figure out what are the places in the constitution that are a blank space that needs to be filled in, that needs to be amended. And I'm sure that's not going to be the only thing that maybe need to be addressed in the constitution as we did and as we saw but it requires a very careful approach. So my answer would be no, not starting with the constitution. Thank you. Do you want to address closing civic space? Sure, I can talk about the closing civic space issue at least with respect to Tunisia where this is a real issue. So far since Khaisaid's power grab and sort of the end of Tunisia's democratic democratization process there has been what I would call sort of informal pressure on closing spaces, there's been rhetoric from the president himself that's been very hostile towards civil society and civic mobilization to a certain extent. And there's been sort of a growing sort of police heavy handedness which sadly is not something new for post Ben Ali Tunisia but it has intensified in terms of street mobilization. A lot of NGOs in Tunisia are very worried that they're here to for very open liberal progressive NGO legal framework, civil society legal framework which is like one of, I think maybe other than Iraq those are the two countries in the Middle East and North Africa that have these really progressive really open NGO laws sort of like people feel that the sort of damocles is hanging over them that at any minute President Said could say, all right we're getting rid of that law and putting in a new very repressive law. So although that hasn't happened yet it is sort of looming as something that people are very worried about. So I believe that there is a huge role for the international community for democratic countries to play on this issue. It's not ever for the United States to say what exactly Tunisian law should say or how Tunisian should run their political affairs but it is for the United States to stand up for universal rights and freedoms, universally recognized rights and freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of association are at the top of the list of those universally respected rights. So I think it's very important for the United States and for Europe which is European countries significant actor in Tunisia to stand up for the principles of freedom of association, civic freedom, civic space, while not dictating of course what should be in the law or not in the law or what the bylaws should say but to stand up for those principles and to make our voice known loud and clear publicly and privately in Tunisia that the US is very much behind preserving these freedoms and that if the Tunisian leadership decides to do away with them that there will be a negative reaction from the United States because once as we all know once that civic space closes or is closed by the authorities then lots of other things become impossible. And so I think the goal of the international community those who support a return to democracy in Tunisia should be to help Tunisians preserve that space in which they can act peacefully and shape their own destiny to have those freedoms to have those rights. And so I think this is one of the most important things that the US government should be paying attention to. And I know that it is on the radar of Congress it's on the radar of the Biden administration they are following this closely they are raising it with the Tunisian government and I hope they will continue to do so so the message is crystal clear that this is very important to the United States and if that civic space is closed legally and formally and through informal action intensifying pressure and repression that there will be a negative reaction from Washington so I hope that that will that that's the message that's being delivered. Can I add something to that if you don't mind it I forgot to address the question of civic space well that's not only not right to do to close the civic space but that's also very dangerous. And I want to recall the domestic political turmoil after the war in 2020 when there were people not only political parties but also a political groups of people were trying to organize protests and demonstrations and the decision of the government back then was that all of them need to take place no matter where they want to do it when they want to do it during the daytime during the nighttime wherever and whenever and I think that was a really smart decision and that was how things should be because if a person does not have especially in the moments where it's a very tense situation inside the country when they do not have the opportunity to speak up that's a very dangerous place to go to. Thank you. Okay, I really hate to do this because we could talk about these things for hours I have many other questions that I hope to ask but I think it's now time for us to end the session I want to thank Amy, Ambassador McCoon and Jonathan again for spending their time with us today and sharing their expertise this has been a really wonderful conversation that's given me a lot to chew over thank you to the audience who attended both here and virtually we're very glad that you could be here and we hope that this is the starch or the continuation of your engagement with activities at USIP in the future if you're here there will be tea and coffee outside for a brief reception after this so thank you all very much for coming.