Abstract

This chapter begins with an account for the presence of a revolutionary situation that needed only a ‘spark’ to ignite it in Tunisia and Egypt. It then goes on to examine the post-revolutionary timetable of elections in these two countries leading to the establishment of a constitutional assembly obligated to create an entirely new structure for the practice of a representative and plural politics. It underlines not only the somewhat different paths taken in Egypt and Tunisia as they progress towards the same general goal, but also the passage of lessons and political experience of both, including what appear to be obvious mistakes. While the Arab world in general made use of examples taken from a global and historical repertoire of revolutionary change going back to the influence of both the American and French revolutions of the late eighteenth century, the mutual influences exercised in the Egyptian-Tunisian case remains something extra special in their intensity and effect.