This book provides an analytically original and empirically rich study of the Maghreb's highly erratic encounter with democratization in recent years.

It is an illuminating study of the complex and very diverse encounters between civil society and the authorities in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, as opposition has built up in each society and those in power have confronted the pressures for democratization.

The author provides a significant contribution to political sociology's understanding - via the development of a dynamic systems model that incorporates the existence of fundamental conflict - of how democratic institutions can become institutionalized, and of the constant possibility of any democratic transition being reversed.