In Tunisia under Ben Ali (1987–2011), marked human rights rhetoric coincided with intense repression. This points to a more general puzzle: what happens when authoritarian regimes uphold their repressive power maintenance agendas while simultaneously trying to avoid negative international consequences?

This article argues that authoritarian decision-makers attempt to evade negative consequences from international audiences by applying cushioning strategies in the form of obfuscation, rhetorical justification and/or procedural justification. In that way, they adapt their repressive tactics and manipulate the visibility and perception of their repressive behavior. Ben Ali’s main strategy was to obfuscate, i.e. to deny and cover repression.

However, as international audiences are far from applying the same yardstick to all human rights violations, ruling elites often repress targets differently depending on whether audiences have links and sympathy. Again, this becomes apparent in the Tunisian case study, from which hypotheses are generated for future research.

在突尼斯本·阿里（Ben Ali）（1987-2011）的统治下，明显的人权言论与强烈的镇压同时发生。这指向了一个更笼统的谜题：当威权政权坚持自己的压制性权力维护议程，同时又试图避免负面的国际后果时，会发生什么？

本文认为，威权决策者试图通过采用混淆，修辞论证和/或程序论证等形式的缓冲策略来逃避国际听众的负面影响。这样，他们可以调整自己的压制策略，并控制其压制行为的可见性和感知力。本·阿里（Ben Ali）的主要策略是混淆，即否认和掩盖压制。

但是，由于国际观众远未对所有侵犯人权行为采用相同的准绳，因此统治精英经常根据观众是否有联系和同情而不同地压制目标。同样，这在突尼斯案例研究中变得很明显，从中得出了用于未来研究的假设。