Scholars interested in the variation of Third Wave democratization have utilized cross–regional frameworks in which a single outcome characterizes the Arab world: no democratization. A number of social scientists working on Arab cases have shifted the investigation away from why democratization failed to how authoritarianism endured and changed over the past two decades. This article joins these efforts by examining the importance of professional associations, which refers to professional representatives and private economic groups, and their relations with regimes and states. The paper examines how three nondemocratic Arab regimes in Jordan, Syria, and Kuwait weathered economic and political crises in the 1980s and 1990s through contested or coordinated relations with professional associations. Outcomes are explained by focusing on (1) the respective social bases of regimes and associations influencing state intervention in associational life and (2) how state intervention shaped the capacity of associations either to contest state policy or to coordinate toward implementation.