The post-colonial state in the Arab region and its subsequent state-led development policies ushered in an era of tight social control. The state created corporatist structures to control groups representation, and their organizations and social demands. Unlike Latin America, the initial period of popular incorporation and social mobilization in the 1950s and 1960s was used predominantly to solve elite conflicts for power grab (not for economic imperatives and social transformation). Various elite factions appealed to popular constituencies to prevail over their rivalries. Populist elites, therefore, appealed to powerful social classes of the colonial era (labor, middle class professionals, peasants, urban notables) to serve as a bastion and legitimate foundation for the post-colonial regimes. These social groups were embedded into a network of patronage with the populist leadership that did not allow them to have autonomous organizations. The decay of state corporatism in the Arab region in the 1980s did not give rise to either more competitive and democratic politics (Brazil, Chile, Venezuela) or new repressive regimes to suppress demands of previously privileged groups (Peru and Argentina). How did the decline of corporatist arrangements in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Algeria represent an evolution of authoritarianism? And how did the authoritarian regimes in these countries stay immune against popular demands for radical changes? I argue that the legacy of popular incorporation strategy of depoliticization and demobilization on the one hand, and continuity with the composition of the ruling elites undermined the autonomy and capacity of collective action of different social groups and perpetuated the one-dominant party rule. The dismantling of the corporatist structures in Latin America resulted in reconfiguration of the party systems and changes in the ideological orientation/positions of traditional parties which ultimately led to the two divergent trajectories of democratization or a harsh repressive turn. I deploy comparative historical approach to show how political variables of the legacy and the strategy of populist elites and the lack of alternative political opposition in the Arab region enabled old military-technocratic elites to loosen up their control over society and maintain their grip on power. I also use pair comparisons to put the Arab countries in cross-regional perspective with the Latin American countries.