After the fall of Ben Ali, protests against the economic situation became almost like a ritual at the beginning of a year when the new finance law would come into effect right around the time of 2011 revolution’s anniversary on 14th January. Disappointed expectations for socioeconomic improvement clashed with the reality of persisting grievances and at times even further social cuts. The finance laws of 2018 and 2019, however, were met by particular resistance of a wide array of social actors. These two laws implemented the conditions of the IMF loan, agreed upon in 2016, including subsidy reduction and cuts in public sector employment. Yet, the finance laws were also accompanied by the introduction of new social welfare programs. Furthermore, certain reform measures such as freezing public sector wages had to be taken back given the strong resistance of the Tunisian trade union federation. At first sight, these observations meet the expectation of political science as budget politics in democracies are built on trade-offs (Adolph et al. 2020). Yet, the growing contention in Tunisia over the annual budget seems to indicate that solid trade-offs could not be achieved, pointing to a shrinking common ground between the government and social actors. The paper therefore asks for the impact of these fierce struggles over the budget politics for the political order in Tunisia. It builds on document and media analysis as well as interviews conducted with stakeholders during field research. From a political economy perspective, it situates these conflicts in the specific context that make budget politics in Tunisia different from Western democracies: the process of democratization on the one hand, and the form of neoliberalism promoted by the IMF on the other hand. The paper argues that one crucial question at stake here is the one of agency: Analyzing the preparation, deliberation and implementation phase of the two laws, agency in the budget process is not confined to the IMF as one might argue from a leftist position. Looking at specific topics it becomes clear that domestic actors can have the power to block or water down reforms. The cycles of reform and resistance rather show the complexity of bargaining processes that the textbook macro-stabilization programs of the IMF tend to ignore, thereby fueling societal conflicts and weakening the new political order.