The conference paper will present initial findings of my dissertation research on the first interim governments that emerged during the breakdowns of the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in 2011. The paper focuses on the case of Tunisia. In this dissertation, I seek to explain how and why the events in 2011-12 between the collapse of the dictatorship and the first democratic elections, governed by a provisional administration, unfolded differently in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. I will also explore the implications of these differences for later stages of each country’s transition from authoritarian rule. I hypothesize that the extent to which each provisional administration attempted to include all political forces in its decision-making processes, and the extent to which each one helped all stakeholders feel included in the constitution-writing process that followed, explain the major similarities and differences among the cases. I further hypothesize that the key influences that shaped each provisional administration’s inclusiveness were the structure of opposition forces and the nature of their state institutions under authoritarian rule. I aim to describe each first provisional administration in detail and to trace the causal linkages between each one’s attempts at inclusion and the course of events during the period in which it governed. I will also attempt to describe some of the direct effects of those decisions and events on each country’s second phase of transition, in order to formulate some hypotheses about the effects of first provisional administrations for future testing. The conference paper will use research published in the United States and Europe and interviews with researchers and regional experts based in Washington, D.C. It will also draw from interviews conducted in Tunisia in summer 2013 and fall 2014. The information from these sources helps begin to describe the process of the Tunisian provisional government’s formation, its characteristics, and its tasks, and the impact of these features on the post-election period that followed its tenure.