Following the 2011 regime change in Tunisia, a considerable number of international democracy promoters have entered the country, wielding their influence into the national social and political affairs. The involvement of democracy promoters in the Tunisia transition has spurred a debate over the ability of these actors to enhance the democratization process. While extensive attention was given to the EU democracy promotion in Tunisia (Mouhib 2014, Dandashly 2018), some scholars have also explored the INGOs’ role in the Tunisian transition to democracy, underlining the favourable conditions that allowed INGOs to cooperate with the Tunisia’s transitional elites (Kornwall 2017, Marzo 2019) Yet, no one has focused on the evolution of INGOs assistance within the Tunisian democratizing. Using the Tunisian case, this paper argues that in the first years of the democratic transition (2011-2014) the Tunisian political and civil actors accepted INGOs assistance for three main reasons. First, Tunisian transitional elites welcomed foreign assistance as they lacked expertise on how to manage the challenges arising from the transition, including holding free and fair elections and the elaboration of a new Constitution. Second, political parties strategically opened doors to interaction with Western INGOs as they had interest to show a liberal profile to Western state partners and to the international media. Third, and most importantly, all political parties perceived that the constitution-making process would have enshrined a fundamental, yet very general, text that would not have had an impact on sensitive political issues, and thus would not undermined the relations with their political base. The article demonstrates that since the adoption of the 2014 constitution, political parties are showing less enthusiast about the INGOs pressure for policy implementation and legislative reforms, especially when this pressure touches upon sensitive political issues. The article shows that since 2015, political parties are progressively at odds with INGOs to meddling into national political affairs because the legislative reform process involves competing political priorities, therefore encapsulating the political battle to maintain core values and sociocultural norms that help to secure the political base. Relying on extensive fieldwork in Tunisia, this study suggests national narrative vis-à-vis INGOs work has transformed from benign and legitimate to partisan and illegitimate because INGOs have “invaded” the political battleground wherein political parties are competing for their own survival.