As the events of the Arab Spring unfold, scholars have been speculating about the similarities and differences across various protest movements. Are these revolutionary movements? Do they have characteristics in common with revolutionary movements elsewhere? In order to understand these questions, this paper attempts to examine the micro-foundations of protest behavior across Tunisia and Egypt. How similar, for example, were the reasons for participation in protest across the two cases? Further, how similar were these motives to those in other protest/revolutionary moments in states outside the region? Using data from the Second Wave Arab Barometer (administered right after the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia) this paper seeks to address these questions. The paper will first examine the extent and magnitude of the protests in each country, comparing and contrasting the key motives and priorities shaping protest behavior in the each state. Second, the paper will compare findings from the Arab world to protest behavior in Ukraine using a dataset of 1800 individuals collected in 2005, three months after millions of Ukranians poured onto the streets for seventeen days. This paper will concentrate on the similarities and differences across these protest movements and, where possible, make inferences about what these similarities and differences mean for the trajectory of political development in the Arab World.