The second chapter provides a brief description of the Sunni political Islam as an ideology with a focus on its historical provenances of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its diffusion to the broader MENA region. This chapter gives an overview of the psycho-biographies of individual Muslim Brotherhood leaders: Mohamed Morsi, Rashid Ghannouchi, and Khaled Mashal. The authors discuss the operational code analysis results and deliberate on what kind of generic foreign policy behavior and strategies we should expect from the Sunni political Islamist leaders. The chapter also sheds light on what these results and strategies mean for MENA politics. The chapter concludes that despite the conventional portrayal of Muslim Brotherhood leadership, these leaders resort to negotiation and cooperation to settle their differences, hence the best way to approach them is to engage in a Rousseauvian assurance game that emphasizes international social cooperation.

Chapter 1 describes how Tunisia’s unique success has been based on comparative strength in national unity and state capacities along with an apolitical military, and Islamist and secular political parties exceptionally willing to work together to sustain a democratic bargain. Latent threats to Tunisia’s democracy remain in a security sector fighting reform, socioeconomic struggles, and the resurgence to power of pre–Arab Spring political and economic elites.