Tunisia will hold its second-ever presidential elections on 15 September in a poll seen as a major test of the only democracy to emerge from the 2011 Arab spring.

The death in July of the country’s president, Beji Caid Essebsi, 92, a secularist who was instrumental in steering the country’s transition to democracy, forced the polls to be held earlier than originally scheduled in November.

Without Essebsi, Tunisia’s broadly secular forces – held together by little other than opposition to the powerful Islamist Ennahda party – have scattered, creating an unpredictable contest that could reshape the political landscape of the fledgling Maghreb democracy.

The country’s 2011 revolution, the trigger for waves of popular uprisings in Syria, Libya, Bahrain and elsewhere, was driven as much by the price of bread as the cloying authoritarianism of the country’s former leader, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. By many measures, the Tunisian economy is now in an even worse state, contributing to regular protests and a widespread sense of alienation from politics, according to public surveys.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People attend a commemoration ceremony for the late Tunisian president, Beji Caid Essebsi, in Tunis. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

“People say things are worse now than in 2011 because of problems with security and the cost they face, for example for schooling and day-to-day life,” said Hichem el Amri, an engineer and youth worker in Sidi Bouzid, the town where the vegetable vendor Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in December 2010 and ignited fierce pro-democracy protests across Tunisia and the Arab world.

“If we compare the cost of vegetable, fruits, clothes, they are now twice or three times as expensive.”

The disillusionment has contributed to the radicalisation of young Tunisians, with an estimated 30,000 attempting to or successfully reaching battlefields in Syria and Iraq. Many are now seeking to return. Tunis, the capital, was rocked by two suicide bombings in June that were claimed by the Islamic State group.

Yet Tunisia’s transition to democracy has proved more resilient than some expected. The largely peaceful run-up to the polls has raised hopes the country will achieve its first handover of the presidency from one elected leader to another, considered a key hurdle in the development of young democracies.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Candidates at a TV debate for Tunisian presidential candidates on 7 September. Photograph: Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty Images

Another democratic milestone was broadcast on the country’s television screens on Saturday: the first presidential debates between the Tunisia’s major presidential candidates.

“Often in the Arab world, when we speak of competition we know who wins at the end, with 99.99%,” Lassad Khedder, the head of a private TV channel syndicate, told Agence France-Presse on the eve of the debate. “Today, we don’t know who is going to win.”

One of the election’s leading contenders was missing from the stage: Nabil Karoui, a populist television tycoon who has been compared to Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, was arrested on the eve of the campaign on charges of tax evasion and corruption. He has denied all the charges.

He is still running as part of a crowded field of 26 candidates including Abdelfattah Mourou, a lawyer and the first Ennahda member to run for president since the revolution, and Abir Moussi, a supporter of Ben Ali trading on nostalgia for the former president’s harsh rule, which is growing in some quarters.

“The political class are happy there is democracy, elections and freedom of expression,” Amri said. “But for other people, they don’t care about these things if they have difficulties in their lives.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Abdelfattah Mourou, the Islamist-inspired Ennahda party candidate. Photograph: HASNA/AFP/Getty Images

Hailed as the Arab spring’s only success story, Tunisia’s revolution nearly descended into chaos in the years to 2013 after several leftist leaders were assassinated, allegedly by Islamic extremists, deepening the polarisation between the country’s Islamist and secular factions.

Yet it pulled back from the brink, helped by a coalition of civil society groups who brought warring parties together and were later awarded the 2015 Nobel peace prize.

“A large part of it is also due to the [political] leaders themselves,” said Sarah Yerkes, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. After a close legislative election in 2014, Essebsi and his political rival, the Ennahda president Rached Ghannouchi, struck an improbable agreement to share power, widening the tent to include smaller parties in 2016.

“These men were older, more experienced, and were both extremely committed to democracy, they saw the importance of it for Tunisia and decided it was best for the country to work together.”

Opinion is divided on the wisdom of the power-sharing truce, which has calmed the country’s politics but stalled progress on difficult but urgent reforms that might split the unity government.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tunisia’s prime minister, Youssef Chahed, campaigns as a presidential candidate. Photograph: Mohamed Messara/EPA

Fearful of the bloody chaos that has enveloped some of the other Arab states that revolted in 2011, Tunisian leaders prioritised consensus, said Yerkes. “Tunisia gets all this attention because of what it did in 2011, and it would lose so much prominence if it was to lose that [democracy], including billions of dollars in aid from the US and EU,” she said.

“But stability also has a cost, and part of that is anger and frustration [at the lack of change]. We’re close to nine years since the revolution and people’s patience is running out.”

Sunday’s polls, and legislative elections scheduled for October, will indicate whether the country’s next generation of political elites will be as willing to accommodate each other, and if so, whether they can effectively govern a population frustrated by the lack of progress towards “work, freedom and national dignity” – demands Tunisians chanted on the streets nearly nine years ago.