Why has the Arab countries, managed to escape all three waves of democratization? Is Islam or "Arab" culture essentially undemocratica How (if possible) can democracy be induced in this regiong These are some of the questions that have been occupying observers and scholars of the region for the past two decades. Explanations have been varied, ranging from political culture approaches; to looking at institutional arrangements such as limited-elections, the party system structure, and elite networks; to economic-based explanations of rentierism, and late-development of capitalism. All these explanations, however, tend to over-emphasize regime-level politics and disregard informal politics from below. Yet, recent events in the region during the past few years warrant a need for looking at the prospects of democratization from below. Especially that mass mobilization in the region, which has been dominated by religious movements in the past few decades, is now changing to include new and more varied axes of mobilization (class, gender, and ideology) and groups (e.g. bloggers, state employees, labor, urban poor). Moving away from a statist elite-politics approach this paper questions the expected impact of the recent waves of mobilization for socio-economic demands (2006-present) which included (state employees, industrial labor, and urban poor) on the prospects for democratization in Egypt. The paper is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork during the past five years including participant observation and interviews with the pro-democracy activists (from secular and religious based movements), labor and state-employees' movement leaders. Specifically delineating the links between the labor movement and the pro-democracy activist groups, the paper argues that unlike what many would assume, this preceding cycle of mobilization for socio-economic demands will not strengthen the upcoming pro-democracy mobilization cycle (in response to the parliamentary elections 2010 and Presidential elections 2011) or broaden its base (through the inclusion on antagonized labor, state employees, or the urban poor). Explainging why this tends to be the case, the paper shows how, despite these socio-economic driven contention not having an effect on direct action for regime-level change, they are reshaping the long existing corporatist pact between society and the state. And in doing so, concludes that such pact which has worked formally and informally to sustain authoritarianism in Egypt -and similarly in many countries of the region- is being dismantled by these new forms of contention. And this is where the potential of labor,and other subaltern groups ,as actors for democratization lay.