Tunisia’s political transition (2011-2015) has been much lauded for the unique capacity of political leaders to reach compromise. Tunisian political and social actors did indeed achieve a considerable task with the adoption of a new constitution and the organization of three peaceful elections. The reality of the democratic experiment in Tunisia cannot be approached, however, without taking into consideration the question of sovereignty. How does the new political and economic elite understand Tunisia’s relation to the world, and the country new role in a rapidly changing geopolitical neighborhood? During the Ben Ali era, the relation of Tunisia to the rest of the World was entirely structured around a strategy of extraversion (Jean-François Bayart, 1989, 2006). Extraversion designates the ways in which business and political elites have actively participated in the processes that created and maintain the country in dependent position within the world. Sovereignty thus comes down to the ability to manage dependence. As key brokers, these elites managed to consolidate their domination on the national society through the distribution of the rents coming from their insertion in the global economy: credits, privileges, recognition. This paper seeks to examine whether the revolution and democratic transition have challenged this well-established pattern of willful negotiation of national sovereignty. We will demonstrate that the democratic opening has not allowed for the emergence of a new model of development but, rather, has led to the multi-lateralization and redefinition of the mechanisms of extraversion. We will show how democratization has enabled the shift from a monopoly of the RCD personnel to a monopoly detained by the political elite of the four parties of the government (Ennahda, Nida Tounes, Afeq and UPL), and allowed for a large participation of subaltern actors through illicit trade, trafficking and illegal migration. The paper will examine the debates that occurred among the four governing parties around issues such as Tunisia’s position in the Libyan conflict, or the rethinking of a debt-based development model. Through these case studies, we will try to understand why and how Tunisian new political elites have chosen to remain the main actors of their own clientelization and subjectivation.