NOHA EL-MIKAWY received her M.A. and her Ph.D. from the University of California in Los Angeles, where she studied the politics of transition. She was assistant professor of political science at the American University in Cairo from 1991 to 1993, during which time she collected most of the material for this book. She is currently research fellow at the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen-Nurenberg, doing comparative research on the Arab world and Latin America.