From the literature on authoritarianism and regime survival one can identify three dimensions that are expected to have a causal impact on regime stability (Gerschewski 2011; Merkel et al 2012). First, repression as violation of physical integrity of its people through the security apparatus (hard) or the restriction of political rights and liberties (soft) is expected to have impacts upon regime survival (Davenport 2007). Second, cooptation of relevant actors and groups through formal and informal institutions and practices affect regime stability (Davenport 2007). Thirdly, legitimacy through diffused (input) or specific support (output) has an impact upon regime stability (Gerschewski 2011). All the three aforementioned factors are endogenous in nature and I will argue in this paper that such a domestically-bound perspective is not sufficient in explaining the resilience of authoritarian regimes during the Arab Uprisings (Heydemann & Leenders 2011; Volpi 2012). Most concepts applied to explain the stability of autocrats during 2011 in the Arab World usually treat international influences as external shocks that occur randomly and destabilize a formerly stable equilibrium of authoritarian rule. In that sense they are treated as having an impact upon the three dimensions already mentioned but most likely a destabilizing one. I argue that the impacts from the international domain on domestic regime stability are manifold and increasingly important. Hence, current theorizing lacks specificity and conceptualizing attempts to grasp the complexity of causal impacts originated on the international level. In this paper I would like to sketch out an attempt on how to include a conceptually more specified relation between the international sphere and the pillars of domestic regime stability. Analog to the concept of embedded democracy (Merkel 2004) I will develop a framework that argues that regime stability has to be understood as embedded in certain international and regional contexts. From this context various effects can increase or reduce regime stability especially in critical junctures in which autocrats are facing contestation of their rule. For the empirical assessment I will rely upon mechanisms that illustrate how developments from the international level crucially influenced the stability of the Moroccan regime during the Arab Uprisings in 2011. Empirically I will trace the causal mechanism that links the emerging concept of authoritarian learning (Heydemann & Leenders: 2011; forthcoming) to the resilience of Arab autocrats through the method of process tracing in a qualitative in-depth case study of Morocco relying upon reports, sequential evidence and interview data.