The question that motivates this research originates in contrasts between the Egyptian experience in 2011 and the mini uprising in Jordan in 2012. I ask why the movement in Egypt was sustained for 18 days until Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was ousted after 30 years in power, while the 2012 mini-uprising in Jordan lasted only 4 days and accomplished little, if anything. While scholarship on Jordan focuses on monarchic legitimacy, the changing spatial geography of Jordan, and the Palestinian/Transjordanian internal divide to explain the lack of sustained mass mobilizations (Goldstone 2011a; Schwedler 2013), I will show how differences in state co-optation policies and class capacities mattered the most. Between 2009-2015, I conducted 131 semi-structured in-depth interviews in Egypt and 55 in Jordan with labor and political activists. In addition, using al-Masry al-Youm (Egypt) and al-Dostour (Jordan) newspapers, I created an event catalogue for the eighteen days of the Egyptian uprising, and the four days mini uprising in Jordan, which includes the first systematic account of sectoral workplace protests. Finally, I compared changes in state/capital/labor relations since the more drastic turn to neoliberal capitalism in early 2000s in both Jordan and Egypt. I show that in Egypt, in addition to the organizational capacities of political movements, protests among labor groups from growing crucial sectors in the economy, gave steam to the mobilizations, and put pressure on political and economic elites. In addition, the decline in state corporatism in Egypt, pushed state employees to protest against the regime until Mubarak left. I show that unlike those in Egypt, Jordanian corporatist arrangements were not completely dismantled, and the regime was able to utilize these arrangements to undermine protesters. For example, state employees in Jordan still enjoy significant state benefits, and though, like their Egyptian counterparts, they initially took part in protests, they quickly retreated and refused the call for overthrowing the regime. As for class capacities, workers in crucial economic sectors were completely removed from the democracy movement in Jordan. In spite of the initial wide participation, Jordanian mobilizations lacked labor groups with leverage to continually fill the squares, give steam to the mobilizations, and put pressure on economic and political elites. By conducting an analysis of how neoliberal capitalism impacts the capacities of agents to mobilize, I contribute to the scholarly work on movements in the Middle East and emphasize the often-neglected role of labor in mass movements.