Nathan Thrall, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, a research organization that works to prevent conflicts, said that when the Arab Spring revolutions began in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, he considered the chance of something similar happening in Jordan to be remote. Now, Mr. Thrall said, he and other experts see it as far more likely, if still a long shot.

“If people realize that things will develop in a negative way and they will not be able to make ends meet, they will take matters into their own hands,” said Labib Kamhawi, a political activist and analyst who is scheduled to appear in court this month on charges of sedition, defamation, threatening national unity and disrespecting government institutions, based on comments he made on television in July. “As things become more crucial and more challenging for the regime, the measures used will be tougher and more sinister.”

Zaki Bani Irsheid, vice chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, long Jordan’s leading opposition force, said in an interview before the latest flare of discontent that throughout the past two years his faction had expanded alliances with the extremists known as Salafists, unions and the loose-knit, largely secular protest movement known as the Hirak.

“Is the regime waiting for an explosion in Jordan so his end will be like the Egyptian end or the Tunisian end?” Mr. Irsheid asked, referring to the king. “We are insisting on creating the Jordanian spring with a Jordanian flavor, which means reforming our regime and keeping our Hirak peaceful.”

Samih al-Maitah, Jordan’s minister of information — also speaking before gas-price protests broke out — made a parallel argument. “The Arab Spring is not one model, it’s not Mubarak in prison,” he said, referring to Hosni Mubarak, the deposed Egyptian president. “The Arab Spring gave us the opportunity to reform in Jordan. There were changes in the Constitution, new legislative laws and new elections that will open up the door for something more. There is success. Maybe not enough; we’ll always want more.”

Among the new laws was one passed in September that the government said was needed to organize Jordan’s robust online news industry, but that critics see as a crackdown on expression. The law requires Jordan’s more than 400 news sites to register with the government, hire a member of the journalists’ union as an editor, and keep reader comments on their servers for six months so they can be reviewed by the intelligence service. It also allows for lawsuits against both those who write comments and multiple editors for the content of the comments, which has led a dozen of the most independent sites to block reader feedback in recent weeks in protest.