The search for a fuller understanding of how development and democracy interact in Third World countries continues to interest analysts and policymakers alike, especially when applied to the Arab world—the region least predisposed to either development or democracy. Competing political economy and political culture theories have been advanced to explain the pervasive absence of democratic politics in a context of alternative socioeconomic performances ranging from advanced to backward. Tunisia and Morocco, former French-colonized Arab-Muslim states located in northern Africa, serve as middle-income countries whose politics are undemocratic but whose social and economic performance has been moderately successful. Rather than limiting himself to either of these alternative theoretical approaches, Gregory White locates his analysis at the intersection of the external international political economy and the internal domestic economy and society. By elaborating these case studies within the framework of the European Union and its impact on peripheral middle-income actors, he advances both our understanding of state-society relations in transitional polities and the interaction that takes place between such polities and the powerful global forces that configurate and constrain their domestic policy choices.