Chapter one presents the conceptual framework for the book through an examination of the relationship between capitalist development and democratization. In doing so, it challenges the assumption, pervasive in much of the literature on economic liberalization in the Global South, that the liberalization of markets facilitates the growth of democratization. The chapter articulates an alternative analytical framework rooted in class analysis. This framework does two things. First, it conceptualizes the main actors among Egypt’s elite as competing fractions of capital, vying for dominance in a context of profound socio-economic change. Secondly, it conceptualizes neoliberalism as a form of capitalism rooted in strategies of accumulation predicated upon the dispossession of the popular classes. In doing so, this chapter articulates the concept of neoliberal authoritarianism as a framework for understanding Egypt’s process of economic liberalization