4 Authoritarianism and the Prospects of Democracy in North Africa and the Middle East Abstract The breakdown of the Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan authoritarian regimes, brought about by mass protests and causing hundreds of civilian victims, and the consequent regime crisis in most of the Arab countries underline the need for new theoretical and empirical investigation on process of transition from authori-tarianism to democracy. The aim of this paper is to interpret the main differences among

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... ome of the North-African and Middle-East authoritarian regimes and explore the real prospects for change. The starting point of the analysis is a critical review of the current classifications of the authoritarianism regimes. Moving from Linz and Stepan (2000) seminal work, significant features among the authoritarian regimes will be highlighted, and it will be argued that these features are likely to affect differently the eventual transition to democracy.