The European Union has been involved in democracy promotion in the Middle East and North African (MENA) for a long time. The Arab Spring events showed that some MENA countries liberalized while others have remained untouched. The diversity of the MENA regime put more challenges on the EU democracy promotion agenda. The question this article seeks to answer is: Despite the EU democratization policies to the MENA, why do we see a different outcome? This article builds on Levitsky and Way (2005) and Sasse (2013) and argues that the diversity in the outcome is the result of the interaction between Western linkages and domestic politics. The focus is on international linkages, intergovernmental, social, technocratic, communication and transnational civil society linkages and the role these linkages play in domestic politics and democratic change. The paper focuses on the EU southern North African cases of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
