Syria, the Arab Uprisings, and the Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience

Abstract

This paper examines the causes of the Arab uprisings with emphasis on the Syrian case, particularly in terms of political-economic elements that seems to escape most analysis of causes. We usually receive a steady explanatory diet with either generic “economic” arguments about poverty or unemployment, or with arguments about intolerance of decades of authoritarian rule. Little attention is given to the interaction between political and economic variables, and even less attention is given to the particularities of every case and their political-economic trajectories. In the Syrian case, these facile and essentially inadequate arguments often take the form of the old and tired “sectarianism” or “sectarian rule” argument, where the Alawi minority is pitted against the Sunni majority. Even more sophisticated arguments that recognize the inadequacy of the “sectarianism” narrative fail to indicate that at least half of Syrian society is itself comprised of minorities. Finally, in the Syrian case in particular, the question of Syria’s regional role and “resistance to imperialism” credentials is introduced by some to blur or mar the anti-authoritarianism protests in favor of regional and international issues that may or may not impinge on the very raison d’être of the uprisings.