This article puts forth an open model of transition to democracy challenging the conventional wisdom of the literature on processes of democratisation, which focuses almost exclusively on domestic factors. International variables are thus at the centre of explanations for regime change. The article argues that transitions do not occur in a vacuum and presents a theoretical model that can be useful to analyse external-internal linkages. The model is then applied to three North African countries, whose efforts to democratise have failed: Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. The article concludes that it is no longer methodologically sound to exclude international factors from the analysis of transitions and that there is considerable evidence pointing in the direction of the central role they have.