Scholars of democratization have recently renewed their efforts to examine the influence of the international context in processes of transitions, by bridging comparative politics and international relations. This article contributes to this growing literature through an analysis of Morocco's stalled democratization in the light of its external context. International factors have been introduced in analyses of democratization only very recently and they have a structural bias. The study offers an ‘agency’-based theoretical framework of understanding and uses concepts drawn from the realist theories of international relations. Two different dimensions along which countries should be analysed when examining their process of regime change are employed. The article then proceeds to examine the case of Morocco. It concludes that the international dimension crucially contributed to shape the development and the outcome of the Moroccan transition by modifying the incentive structures of the domestic actors.