The Tunisian Presidential Election: Five Questions with Professor Alfred Stepan

Alfred Stepan has been called the democracy whisperer. As the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, he's been watching, advising and studying government and democracy for over 40 years. He has done field research and written about more than 15 attempts at democratic transition, including relatively successful attempts in Brazil, Chile, Spain, Portugal, Poland, the Czech Republic, India, Indonesia and Senegal. Stepan just returned from his sixth visit to Tunisia with a field report on the development of democracy building there. Tunisia will hold its run-off presidential election on December 21, the first such election in the country since sparking the Arab Spring in 2010. Stepan began his career as a journalist and got his first big scoop by accurately predicting a 1964 coup in Brazil as a foreign correspondent for The Economist —a prediction the magazine declined to print until after it happened. He became a professor in 1970.