2011 has witnessed the fall of Ben Ali. Since January 2011 many other rulers in the region have been forced to escape. The whole world was taken aback by “this brutal emergence of the revolutionary event”, surprised by their “snowball” effect on a regional scale. Surprise is all the stronger as the rupture takes place within an Arab world perceived as refractory to the democratic wave and resistant to change.

And yet the warning signs of the political and social deflagration left no doubt as to the disruption of authoritarian mechanics, admittedly so well oiled, but which was mistakenly believed to be resistant to any trial. This text analyses the establishment of the authoritarian syndrome in the Arab countries since independence and the reasons for its longevity. It is placed in the long term in order to find the markers that make the subject under study intelligible and sketch hypotheses.