In the media, in the discourse of the Tunisian political elite and also in a part of sociopolitical literature, the Tunisian revolution is conceived as an urban revolution, led by civil society, spearheaded by young people and the unemployed. We consider this approach as very problematic and even questionable in relation to the complex history of this revolution because it expresses an imbalance in the analysis of the power distribution between different actors. On the basis of a field survey conducted in the regions of Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine in 2011 and 2012, the paper aims, using the concept of political market after having adapted it sociologically to the context, to point out two ideas: the first is that the collapse of the Ben Ali regime is due to the deterioration of the exchange’s terms of Tunisian political market; the second concerns the rural hidden engine of the Tunisian revolution.