The ‘myth of moderation’ following the Arab Uprisings: polarization in Tunisia and Egypt’s founding elections

From the actor-centric perspective of party politics, it is widely held that the two transitional outcomes observed in Tunisia and Egypt are the result of the different degree of polarization across the two party systems. Through a quantitative text analysis of the party manifestos of the main transitional parties in Tunisia and Egypt, this contribution shows that the end result of the two transitional experiences has actually little to do with polarization and it is rather due to the way political parties structured political competition during the founding elections.