Fourteen years ago, on January 14, 2011, Tunisians shouted for freedom and dignity on Tunisia’s central avenue, Habib Bourguiba Avenue, to celebrate the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. . The haunting self-immolation of fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in the town of Sidi Bouazid triggered “occupations” of public squares in nearly every city in the country, triggering 28 days of unrelenting civil disobedience , he fled the country and announced his resignation.

The Tunisian people’s victory over their long-time oppressors and their suffocating corrupt regime was so extraordinary, so spectacular, that it inspired a wave of Arab uprisings across the region.

In cities from Yemen to Morocco, millions of freedom-hungry residents joined the Tunisian “occupiers” on Bourguiba Boulevard in celebrating the fall of their brutal dictatorship and calling for their own liberation. With the achievements of “karama” (dignity) and “hurriyya” (freedom) for the Tunisian people, a new movement was born that set the entire region on a revolutionary trajectory of “tahrir” (liberation).

More than a decade later, the legacy of these uprisings, known as the Arab Spring, is mixed at best. The Arab country of Syria began its own revolutionary journey following Tunisia on March 30, 2011, after 14 years of devastating war and losses, with armed rebels only succeeding in overthrowing dictator Bashar al-Assad last month. Assad. In other Arab Spring countries, including Tunisia, revolutions came more quickly but were short-lived, with authoritarianism, oppression and conflict re-emerging soon after the initial success of the revolting masses.

Of course, all this did not diminish the moral and political courage of the 2011 uprising. The moral symbolism of these revolutions – as extraordinary victories of once-silent peoples against some of the most closely guarded states in the world – has enduring power.

The new social and political patterns of public life that emerged behind these revolutions persist in Tunisia and other Arab regions. Before 2011, the country’s political system was dominated by the political decay of delegitimized rulers and undermined by excessive coercive and administrative power and exclusionary practices. These revolutions emboldened the people of the region to demand a say in the nature of their governance and permanently changed the way we talk about and analyze Arab postcolonial state-society relations.

To this day, January 14, 2011 remains a historic moment that ignited a moral fire and gave rise to a cry for freedom for the vast number of people living in the Arab region. It has crept into the hearts, minds and imaginations of young Arabs who yearn for a better future. The revolution in Tunisia, and subsequent revolutions in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen, drew inspiration, confidence, and moral vitality from the collapse of entire authoritarian institutions that had previously been thought immune to sudden, people-power overthrow .

However, it is undeniable that the flags of freedom and dignity raised on the ruins of the fallen regime were soon replaced by counterrevolution.

After the overthrow of authoritarian rulers in 2011, the glamor of revolution quickly lost its luster in most Arab Spring countries. This did not happen because the idea of ​​revolution itself was no longer popular among the Arab public who “occupied the squares.” This is certainly not because the ideological opponents of the revolution, including those who espouse electoral democracy (or even those who support “Islamic democracy,” such as Tunisia’s Rashid Ghannouchi), have had ample time to prove or disprove them value. Instead, the swing of the counterrevolutionary pendulum from Tunisia to Egypt resulted in “revolutionaries” being forced into defensive positions and forced to abandon their “revolutionary” demands. Indeed, over time, revolutions and revolutionaries degenerated in every respect.

In newly freed countries such as Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen, political parties began to deviate from their original democratic intentions. The rekindling of old forms of political polarization, economic and social cleavages, armed militias, and systemic tensions involving deep state actors and civilian protagonists are responsible for this deviation. At the same time, the wealth gap between haves and have-nots that formed the original cry for freedom and dignity remains intact. This multifaceted crisis sounded the death knell for true revolutionary change, a complete break with the overthrown dictatorship.

The result was the formation of so-called Arab Spring quasi-democracies, known as “hybrid regimes” with mixed authority and few of the ideals that the Arab streets called for during the Arab Spring uprisings.

Today, the prisons of some of these “democracies” are filled with political activists accused of “conspiracy to subvert state power” – mandatory charges that many believe were consigned to the dustbin of history after the 2011 revolution. The rule of law, one of the core demands of the uprising, has been abandoned and the law itself is being mobilized against actors who should be contributing to the state from the open public square, if not the democratic parliament. Instead of using their expertise to benefit the country, they were left to rot in cells for terrorizing the powers that be who controlled the country after the revolution. Such purges cast doubt on the feasibility of a revolution that would radically break with the traditional authoritarian practices of the past.

In this context of democratic backsliding, where freedom of association, participation, debate and expression are constantly under threat, elections themselves inevitably lose credibility. Low turnout illustrates the decay of democracy in elections in places like Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia.

In many Arab Spring countries, the political opposition shares the same democratic flaws and weaknesses as the governing states, leading many voters to believe that elections, no matter how fair and free they appear, are futile. Intra-party democracy remains weak, if not non-existent. Those who lead political parties and civil society organizations tend to cling to power and are unwilling to democratically change leadership positions. As a result, those who made the 2011 revolution possible – the people – are losing interest in the electoral process.

Of course, the blame for the degradation of democracy since the 2011 revolution cannot be placed solely on the deep state or domestic political leaders.

Over the past 14 years, agreements between post-uprising Arab governments and Western powers and institutions such as the United States, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have reinvigorated Arab authoritarianism and dampened revolutionary fervor. . In countries such as Lebanon and Egypt, for example, the IMF has played a key role in sustaining authoritarianism by providing funding to governments, undermining people’s hopes for new leaders or revolutionary, lasting solutions to their economic and political woes. . .

Arab Street has not forgotten August 2013 I want a massacresecurity forces killed hundreds of supporters of democratically elected ousted president Mohamed Morsi. Nor are they indifferent or unaware of the Western-facilitated Israeli genocide in Gaza and the inability of Arab states to end it for 15 months.

The Arab public is well aware that countries run by experienced or potential dictators are now little more than terrorists or immigration gatekeepers. They protect borders and seek to ensure the elusive “stability”, which is in the mutual interest of regional and Western leaders.

This is perhaps the most important and enduring legacy of the Tunisian revolution and the Arab Spring more broadly. Of course, the “Emperor” was not defeated. But he was exposed. Like the vain emperor in the famous Danish folktale, the nakedness of Arab countries and their rulers has become impossible to conceal. No clothes. No lid. There is no “democracy,” bargaining politics, power sharing, or free citizenship. The uprising created a new relationship between state and public in the Arab world and revealed a secret: the emperor had no clothes.

Fourteen years after the Tunisian revolution, democracy remains lacking in Tunisia and the wider Arab world. But so did all the emperor’s clothes, and the Arab people had noticed. The legacy of the revolution lives on.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.