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The Autocrat’s Advisors: Opening the Black Box of Ruling Coalitions in Tunisia’s Authoritarian Regime

Why do autocrats retain some elites as core, long-term members of their ruling coalitions for years, while others are dismissed in months? How and why might the type of elites retained within coalitions vary across time and different autocrats? Although what constitutes an authoritarian regime’s ruling coalition varies across countries, often including the military and dominant parties, this article focuses on one critical subcomponent of it—an autocrat’s cabinet and his elite advisors within it, his ministers. Because coalitions function opaquely to prevent coups, scholars consider their inner-workings a black box. We shed light through an original, exhaustive dataset from the Middle East of all 212 ministers who advised Tunisian autocrats from independence until regime collapse (1956–2011). Extracting data from Arabic sources in Tunisian national archives, we track variation in minister retention to identify which elites autocrats made core, long-term advisors within ruling coalitions. Whereas Tunisia’s first autocrat retained elites as ministers due to biographical similarities, capacity to represent influential social groups, and competence, its second autocrat did not. He became more likely to dismiss types of elites retained under the first autocrat, purging his coalition of ministers perceived to be potential insider-threats due to their favored status under his predecessor.