AMMAN, Jordan—Protests that washed across neighboring Syria and Egypt have been more of a ripple in this poor kingdom of six million with relative political freedoms by Middle Eastern standards.

Still, they have persisted.

In the southern town of Tafilah on Friday, a crowd of about 300 chanted slogans as they marched down the main street of the city of 60,000.

Demonstrators in Amman Friday sought economic and political reforms.

"No to putting up prices!" they shouted, holding banners that blasted government corruption and demanded "the reform of the regime" as hundreds more people looked on approvingly from buildings and rooftops.

In January King Abdullah II dismissed the prime minister and the government and presided over two economic-assistance packages aimed at soothing anger in the streets. But those packages have deepened an already dire budget.

Spillover from the nearby uprisings has hurt. On Jordan's eastern flank, Egyptian insurgents have four times blown up an Egyptian gas pipeline that feeds the country, forcing energy rationing and costing Jordan hundreds of millions of dollars.

To Jordan's north, Syrian unrest has disrupted trade and smuggling networks, depressing the livelihoods of many Jordanians who live along that border.

Meeting its economic imbalances—by cutting the staggering government outlays for popular food and fuel subsidies, for example—risks stoking the political unrest, which could worsen Jordan's economic slump by devastating the one remaining bright spot, tourism. Yet, leaving high subsidies could bankrupt the government, which is already is running a record budget deficit and has debt approaching 60% of the country's GDP.

"The economic situation, the financial situation, the foreign debt are tremendous," said Taher al Masri, speaker of the Jordanian Senate, in an interview. "The level of subsidies is unbearable. And yet you're damned if you do and damned if you don't."

Jordan is a crucial U.S. ally in combating militant Islamic groups in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Despite its small population and few natural resources, the kingdom is one of only two Arab states that maintain relations with Israel—the other is Egypt—and a cornerstone of the regional security balance.

Jordan's struggle underlines the persistence of the Arab Spring—why the aftershocks, or even new earthquakes, are likely to continue. The first uprisings cleanly decapitated the governments in Tunisia and then Egypt, but the results of the protests they spawned across the region have been less decisive.

Libya and Yemen have been rendered ungovernable, while Syria appears on the brink of joining them. The movement has also complicated the rule of lesser-noticed countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Oman and Jordan and raised the stakes of failing to respond to their citizens.

Jordan's scattered protesters have stopped short of calling for an end to the reign of King Abdullah, who inherited power from his father in 1999. Instead, when they began demonstrating last year, even before the Arab Spring, they focused on economic concerns and corruption and escalated this year to demands for a political overhaul and a bigger voice for citizens.

Despite the monarchy's relative free speech and fairly broad political freedoms by Middle East standards, the king appoints the prime minister and has the power to dissolve parliament at will. Jordan's impoverished rural areas have long felt neglected and have been devastated by rising prices of food and fuel. Their discontent rose over the past few years as a reform government cut subsidies.

"We're witnessing a new phase of pressure building," said Labib Kamhawi, an activist.

Meanwhile, the government privatized big government factories and mining operations in recent years, sometimes amid charges of corruption involving an urban elite business class. Those factories and mines often employed some of the poorest Jordanians, and their sales contributed to a jobless rate of close to 50% among youths.

Even Queen Rania, the wife of King Abdullah II, has come under rare public criticism, especially after a lavish 40th birthday party late last year in the south near some of Jordan's poorest communities.

The protests in Tunisia and Egypt added fuel to those in Jordan. Jordan's powerful Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, joined in. The building discontent prompted King Abdullah in January to reverse the economic reforms, raise the salaries of public workers and reinstate subsidies on fuel—moves that added to the budget deficit.

On Feb. 1, King Abdullah formed a new government, dismissing Prime Minister Samir Rifai, who just two months earlier had been given an overwhelming vote of confidence by a parliament that suddenly looked out of touch with the population. The king replaced him with former ambassador Marouf al-Bakhit, a former general who had served a previous stint as prime minister.

Still, the protests continued. By March, under pressure from both the street and Washington, the king launched a renewed effort at political reform—noting the failure of past efforts but expressing new determination to accomplish them now.

The result is a potentially volatile mix.The kingdom will need to cut back spending and perhaps privatize more operations to raise money and cut a sprawling public payroll—both deeply unpopular measures with its key support base in rural areas. Recent events are raising expectations among citizens for a bigger say in how the nation is run.

Anger, though expressed through peaceful demonstrations, runs deep. Many participants in the Friday protest were young, unemployed men who said they were fed up with the government. "My father was a loyalist," said one 25-year-old after the demonstrations. "He got nothing from it.

Corrections & Amplifications

Egypt is west of Jordan. This article incorrectly says that Egypt is on Jordan's eastern flank.