How do autocrats ensure the long-term loyalty of those they appoint in office? While existing research identifies appointment to senior government positions as a mechanism of elite co-optation, we know comparatively less about the strategies autocrats use to ensure appointees’ long-run loyalty. I study one strategy that allows autocrats to maintain loyalty, the shuffling of officials across positions and regions. My argument highlights how, in a ‘co-optation shuffle’, elite rotation aims to sustain credible co-optation and to promote elites’ upward mobility, often at the expense of good governance. Officials are moved to prevent network building and policy stagnation. This contrasts with a ‘performance shuffling’ strategy, where appointments prioritise competence and good performance. To explore these dynamics, I study the career trajectories of Kazakhstan’s appointed regional governors (akims). Collecting unusually detailed biographical data that span 25 years (from 1997 to 2022), I present a comprehensive quantitative analysis of governor’s time in each office and career trajectories. My findings reveal a dynamic system of rotation focused on credible co-optation. They highlight one way that authoritarians attempt to maintain control of other elites, even at the expense of good governance, and have implications for studies of co-optation as strategy of authoritarian control