Arab authoritarianism exceptionality ceased to exist in 2011 when massive popular mobilizations broke out in many countries across the region calling for the fall of the regime – the captivating chant in most demonstrations. Some scholars were inspired to coin a particular term, the Arab Spring, while others argued that we are witnessing a fourth-wave of democratization. Positive sentiments, however, were soon eclipsed by civil wars, foreign military interventions, and counterrevolutions. Tunisia is a stark exception to this commonality. It continues today to consolidate the democratic concession it secured in the early days of the uprisings. Comparatively, Egypt was abruptly ejected from a similar democratic opening by a military coup. Morocco witnessed a transformation in its state governance structure, albeit less revolutionary than the one in Tunisia. Jordan trembled for a while only to settle for nothing. Other states that witnessed mass mobilizations descended into civil wars as in the cases of Syria, Libya, and Yemen. And despite that the second wave of uprisings in 2019 projected even larger popular participation in Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Algeria, those movements failed at achieving any lasting transformation. The question we are left to contend with today, post-spring, is why do we have different outcomes? Not only do we have to account for the different setbacks, but also more importantly, why do we have different breakthroughs on the path towards democracy? I suggest that approaching these questions through structures of capitalism, its agents, and its mechanisms accounts for a whole range of outcomes. I argue that Tunisia’s industrial relations were more conducive of a transition to democracy than anywhere else in the region. Tunisia shows how capital abandons state elites under popular pressure when tight profit margins disallow a concession at the workplace, making that same capital support calls for political reform in pursuit of a restoration to steady business operations. This finding is based on archival newspaper research and fieldwork conducted in Tunisia in 2019 where I interviewed 35 capitalists, unionists, and activists. Tunisian trade unions extract political outcomes primarily by commanding concessions from the capitalist class due to historically hard-won industrial arrangements, not the ability of commanding the largest protest. Alternatively, higher profit margins, allow capitalists and state elites to reach a dual concession that adheres to both of their interests. I show this dual concession in this paper as a counterfactual based on similar research focusing on Jordan and Morocco.