What explains the almost wholly negative impact of international factors on post-uprising democratization prospects? This article compares the utility of rival “diffusionist” and neo-Gramscian political economy frames to explain this. Multiple international factors deter democratization. The failure of Western democracy promotion is rooted in the contradiction between the dominance of global finance capital and the norm of democratic equality, in the periphery, neo-liberalism is most compatible with hybrid regimes and, at best, “low intensity democracy”. In MENA, neo-liberalism generated crony capitalism incompatible with democratization, while this also sparked the uprisings, these have failed to address class inequalities. Moreover at the normative level, MENA hosts the most credible counter-hegemonic ideologies, the brief peaking of democratic ideology in the region during the early uprisings soon declined amidst regional discourse wars. Non-democrats – coercive regime remnants and radical charismatic ...