It is hardly surprising that political uprisings resulting in war, famine, and civil conflict produce mass disillusionment. However, it is surprising that populations undergoing largely-peaceful political liberalization experience widespread disillusionment, as in the case of Tunisia after the 2010 uprising. Existing literature, couched largely in studies of former communist states, depicts post-revolution disillusionment as the product of widespread desires to a return to a unifying state ideology and economic regulation after neo-liberalization. However, these explanations do not match the already-neoliberal Tunisian case. We use national-level data, responses to cross-national opinion surveys, and original qualitative fieldwork conducted in Tunisia in 2013 and 2014 to investigate why the Arab Spring’s only “successful” revolution produced mass disillusionment. Building on theories ontological security and quotidian disruption, we find that disillusionment stems not from economic restructuring or antipathy toward democracy as an ideal, but from disruptions to individuals’ taken-for-granted, everyday routines due to an attenuation of state capacity, economic disruptions, and changes to the nation’s vulnerability vis-à-vis other states. In so doing, we shed theoretical light on the paradox of why even successful revolutionary movements produce disillusionment, de-mobilization, and atomization among populations supportive of democratic ideals.