What role can political and institutional engineering play in promoting reconciliation and inclusion? Drawing on the Tunisian experience with transitional justice, I argue that there are two interrelated pathways. First, transitional justice processes offer a framework for initiating political and institutional change, often having these official goals. Second, they rarely have the competencies to actually do so, meaning that the implementation of political and institutional reforms geared at fundamental change depends on other political and institutional actors. Thus, transitional justice processes and their potential for contributing to political and social change are also subject to changing political environments, preferences and power structures.