Since 2012, Benin has experienced political tensions related to the “Talon Affair.” This article analyzes the shift in Boni Yayi’s regime to authoritarianism and its complicated relationship with countervailing forces. The article also sheds light on factional battles over the capture of national economic rents and their ethnic and regionalist undertones. Will these tensions turn the peaceful model of the so-called “passive democratic revolution” into a more conflictual scenario of “hegemonic rupture”? The article concludes that analyses of current conflicts should use a medium-term perspective—one that addresses how Benin, a pioneer of peaceful transitions in Africa, has consolidated pluralism since the 1990s.