This article analyses the exercise of power in Tunisia. It does so by offering an explanation that differs from standard studies of authoritarianism, which generally focus on classifications, definitions, and terminological questions, and view power as something that can be possessed and thereby used. In contrast, the analysis here argues from two traditions within historical sociology; Weber’s political economy and Foucault’s analysis of the exercise of power, in order to demonstrate that techniques of domination are embedded in the most everyday economic mechanisms such as in the tax system, solidarity practices and the industrial mise à niveau. These practices serve both to advance the ‘economic miracle’ and simultaneously function as techniques of coercion and repression. An analysis of ‘privatisation of the state’ is then used to illustrate one mode of government and its attendant forms of domination.