Five years after the uprisings that swept through the Arab republics in 2011, it is hard to argue that the people in these countries are faring any better than before, except in the case of Tunisia. All eight republics – Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen – have long been characterized as authoritarian regimes. This book seeks to deepen our understanding of the authoritarianism and coercive systems that prevailed in these countries, and such knowledge is also critical to making a successful transition to a more open and free society.

The failure and collapse of countries such as Libya or Yemen, and Syria's protracted civil war, suggest that the demise of authoritarianism in the region is perhaps remote. Western observers’ misunderstanding of the uprisings was partly due to their lack of awareness of how authoritarian regimes operated. Many were propelled by a wave of enthusiasm that engulfed not only local people but also scholars and commentators. A salutary lesson can be drawn from the continuing research into Latin American and Eastern European regimes where authoritarianism has been perpetuated in spite of their apparent transition to democracy. This underlines the importance of detailed and accurate analysis of the inner workings of these powerful and pervasive systems.

When researching my previous book (Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime), which was based on the archives of the Ba'th Party regime in Iraq (which ruled from 1968 to 2003), I kept asking whether the other Arab republics were similar or not to Iraq and to each other. To answer that question, I would ideally have to examine the archives of other authoritarian Arab regimes. Unfortunately, they are inaccessible to any researcher. Consequently, I turned to memoirs written by those who were embedded in the system: political leaders, ministers, generals, security agency chiefs, party members, and businessmen close to the center of power. I also examined memoirs of people who were on the outside: political opponents of these regimes and political prisoners. I hoped that a combination of the two groups – insiders and outsiders – would help in the endeavor to learn about the coercive tyrannies of the Arab world in spite of being unable to tap into their closed archives. Secrecy was, of course, the norm in these regimes and dissent was severely punished, so reliable information is not readily available.