Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have implemented important economic reform programs in the past two decades that have significantly transformed their economies into more market oriented ones. Economic liberalization has not been accompanied by a similar political liberalization drive. Even though sometimes political openings did occur and were heralded as the start of a new dawn, they have proved more often than not to be just temporarily and thus reversed by the ruling elites. Like in the case of Tunisia when initial optimism of Ben Ali’s political liberalizing moves after he came to power in 1987, turned into disillusion with the strengthening of his authoritarian rule since the early nineties. Although Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia differ in terms of political systems (republics versus monarchy), all three share the legacies of French colonialism, cycles of economic crisis and adjustment and the above mentioned lack of significant political reform. The resilience of authoritarianism in these three states has been explained looking at different factors, from the lack of meaningful external pressure, cultural factors, to a civil society that is constrained in its activities by the state. Relatively little academic comparative work has been done on state-business relations in these countries. With the withdrawal of the state from intervention in the economy and thus an expanding role of the private sector, the power relationship between state and business will be altered. Such a change could provide the private sector with the opportunity to not only ensure the sustainability of the economic liberalization efforts but expand liberalization to the political field as well. This paper will look at regional business elites in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, and analyze how these new forces operate within the constraints that the states have imposed. What roles do they play in the processes of economic liberalization? And will they represent a political force, thus a threat, to the incumbent regimes? The central claim of this paper will be that the specific implementation of economic reform provides the state with the opportunity to fragment the private sector and build new alliances within the business community. Pre reform alliances are reorganized through partial and selective reform to create a private sector that remains dependent on the state and thus fails to become an autonomous force. The paper will make use of existing primary and secondary literature and will draw on interviews with business elites, government officials, and members of civil society.