Politics, at its core, is the management of possibilities—not of fears. Yet when societies pass through moments of severe turmoil, their priorities shift, and the sense of security becomes the central issue that reshapes the entire public sphere.
What our region has witnessed over the past decade was not merely a struggle for power, but a profound transformation in collective consciousness: from fear of the ruler to fear of chaos, and from aspiring to freedom to clinging to stability.
Amid confused and costly experiences, large segments of society redefined the meaning of legitimacy. Fear rose to the forefront as a primary determinant of governance. Over time, fear ceased to be merely a reaction to an exceptional moment and began infiltrating the very structure of political decision-making, almost becoming a permanent logic for running the state.
Yet turning fear into the foundation of legitimacy raises a crucial strategic question:
Can a state governed with an emergency mindset build a sustainable future?
Does concentrating power in a single hand provide real stability—or merely postpone latent tension awaiting its moment?
Professor Imad Daimi — a former member of Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly that drafted the 2014 constitution and a figure close to the civil democratic current — once wrote a phrase worthy of reflection:
“Fear is the greatest enemy of politics.”
This is not a passing rhetorical statement, but an accurate description of an entire phase the Arab region has lived through since the Arab Spring.
In an unprecedented popular surge, it seemed that people had broken the barrier of fear. They demanded dignity, justice, and freedom. Regimes fell, others trembled, and the horizon opened to new possibilities. But what followed resembled a deep political earthquake.
The chaos that followed some experiences, societal divisions, and the collapse of state institutions in certain cases reproduced fear—but in a different form.
It was no longer fear of authority alone.
It became fear of its absence.
Fear of chaos, economic collapse, civil war, and the unknown alternative.
Thus, fear entered the public sphere not as a fleeting psychological state, but as a governing logic. When fear prevails, politics contracts; it shifts from a project of construction to a mechanism of defense. States are managed with an emergency mentality rather than a planning mentality. Decisions become reactions to contain the moment, not policies to shape the future. Stability becomes an absolute value—even if it is fragile.
In a climate of mutual anxiety, the state does not trust its society, and society does not trust its state. Reform freezes. Peaceful transfer of power shifts from being a constitutional right to an existential risk. Here lies the great paradox: the fear invoked to protect the state gradually exhausts it.
Political history tells us that absolute authority born from chaos often justifies itself through the function of protection:
“We are the barrier against collapse.”
“We are the guarantor of stability.”
In moments of danger, societies accept shrinking freedoms in exchange for security. But this equation is inherently unsustainable. Power that expands under the pretext of necessity, if not restrained by constitution and institutions, tends to persist. What was meant to be temporary becomes permanent.
From Europe to Latin America, from Asia to our region, history shows that the absence of mechanisms for peaceful transfer of power accumulates tension beneath the surface of stability—until it erupts in revolution, coup, or sudden collapse.
Perhaps the first wave of revolutions broke the barrier of fear of the ruler. But the following phase revealed a deeper fear: fear of the unknown. Societies fell into a harsh equation: chaos threatening the state’s survival, or absolute authority freezing its future.
The true dilemma is that this equation cannot endure. Fear is a legitimate human emotion. But when it becomes the basis of political legitimacy, it becomes a historical burden.
The greatest danger today may not be explosion—but silent accumulation:
A generation living under persistent economic anxiety.
Elites operating within narrow margins in a public sphere suspended between loyalty and apprehension.
A state moving with a constant defensive mindset.
In such a climate, no real future is formed—only crises are managed. States do not fall only by revolutions, but when they lose the ability to evolve.
The intelligent and patriotic path out of this impasse lies neither in reviving chaos nor in entrenching despotism—but in building a genuine constitutional state:
A democracy not reduced to procedural elections, but grounded in real separation of powers, independent judiciary, free and responsible media, and clear institutional mechanisms for transfer of power.
The essence of democracy is not that one side wins, but that society can change its ruler without bloodshed and without shaking the state itself.
Stability is not created by repression. Freedom is not protected by chaos. Between them lies a difficult but sustainable path: rule of law, respected constitution, restrained authority, and a society unafraid of change.
States are not governed by fear, nor built through reaction. They are preserved when harsh lessons transform into reform courage, anxiety into vision, and power into historical responsibility—not a refuge from the unknown.
