Syria's Economy and the Transition Paradigm
Syria's Economy and the Transition Paradigm

Author: Samer Abboud

Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 90

ISBN-13:

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Exploring the recent trajectory of Syria¿s economy, the authors consider the utility of the transition paradigm¿developed to study change in the former communist states¿as an explanatory approach. In the first part of the book, Samer Abboud examines Syria¿s shift to a ¿social market economy,¿ focusing on similarities in and differences between the Syrian and Chinese cases. In the second part, Ferdinand Arslanian compares empirical indicators for Syria with those from the aggregate of transition countries to predict Syria¿s economic performance and the rate of liberalization. A foreword by Raymond Hinnebusch provides context for the study.

The Political Economy of Muslim Countries
The Political Economy of Muslim Countries

Author: Özgür Ünal Eriş

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2018-07-27

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1527515435

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The book looks in detail at the economic conditions of Muslim countries specifically, offering a thorough political analysis at the same time. It focuses on a broad range of economic factors and takes into consideration reports such as the World Development Index. It explores striking differences and similarities among carefully chosen Muslim countries. Mainly because of its broad use of different disciplines, it will be of interest to students of political science, economics and history.

Syria from Reform to Revolt
Syria from Reform to Revolt

Author: Leif Stenberg

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2015-12-01

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0815653514

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As Syria’s anti-authoritarian uprising and subsequent civil war have left the country in ruins, the need for understanding the nation’s complex political and cultural realities remains urgent. The second of a two-volume series, Syria from Reform to Revolt: Culture, Society, and Religion draws together closely observed, critical and historicized analyses, giving vital insights into Syrian society today. With a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, contributors reveal how Bashar al-Asad’s pivotal first decade of rule engendered changes in power relations and public discourse—dynamics that would feed the 2011 protest movement and civil war. Essays focus on key arenas of Syrian social life, including television drama, political fiction, Islamic foundations, and Christian choirs and charities, demonstrating the ways in which Syrians worked with and through the state in attempts to reform, undermine, or sidestep the regime. The contributors explore the paradoxical cultural politics of hope, anticipation, and betrayal that have animated life in Syria under Asad, revealing the fractures that obstruct peaceful transformation. Syria from Reform to Revolt provides a powerful assessment of the conditions that turned Syria’s hopeful Arab spring revolution into a catastrophic civil war that has cost over 200,000 lives and generated the worst humanitarian crisis of the twenty-first century.

Demystifying Syria
Demystifying Syria

Author: Fred H. Lawson

Publisher: Saqi

Published: 2012-02-13

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0863568181

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Demystifying Syria offers an extraordinary insight into the shifting relations between the Ba'th party and the armed forces, civil law, social structure, burgeoning private enterprise, internal political opposition, the European Union and its relation to Syria. This book goes beyond the headlines to offer a detailed portrait of the political, economic, social and diplomatic dynami that shape this pivotal and fiercely independent Middle Eastern state. Contributors include Bassem Haddad, Souhail Belhadj, Baudoin Dupret, Zouhair Ghazzal, Thomas Pierret, Salwa Ismail, Joshua Landis and Joe Pace. 'Demonstrates how US intervention in the region weakened the position of the Syrian opposition ... shows Syrian studies in the best possible light, edited to a high level and recommended to everyone interested in the complexities - rather than the mysteries - of contemporary Syria.' Times Higher Education Supplement 'This compelling book offers the reader much food for thought on a country that certainly defies any attempt to be encapsulated in unidirectional and straightforward definitions.' International Spectator

Global Security Watch—Syria
Global Security Watch—Syria

Author: Fred H. Lawson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-02-07

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13:

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This timely study examines the forces at play in one of the world's most explosive nations, helping readers understand why Syria's popular uprising has been the most violent and hard-fought in the Middle East. In this insightful work, a noted expert goes behind the headlines to examine the complexities of Syrian politics and their impact on the modern world. Beginning with an overview of political and economic change after 1963 when the Ba'th Party came to power, the book focuses on developments in Syria since Bashar al-Assad assumed the presidency in 2000. It probes the evolution of the Islamist opposition and the course of the popular uprising that broke out in 2011 and explores Syria's multilayered relations with Israel, Turkey, Iran, Russia, and the United States. Readers will learn why rebellion in Syria has taken a much different path than movements that overturned autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen. They will also come away with a more nuanced understanding of the pivotal role Syria plays in both the Arab-Israeli conflict and inter-Arab relations, as well as the confluence of domestic challenges and foreign threats that make Syria the most vulnerable state in the contemporary Middle East.

Revolutions Aesthetic
Revolutions Aesthetic

Author: Max Weiss

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 1503631966

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The November 1970 coup that brought Hafiz al-Asad to power fundamentally transformed cultural production in Syria. A comprehensive intellectual, ideological, and political project—a Ba'thist cultural revolution—sought to align artistic endeavors with the ideological interests of the regime. The ensuing agonistic struggle pitted official aesthetics of power against alternative modes of creative expression that could evade or ignore the effects of the state. With this book, Max Weiss offers the first cultural and intellectual history of Ba'thist Syria, from the coming to power of Hafiz al-Asad, through the transitional period under Bashar al-Asad, and continuing up through the Syria War. Revolutions Aesthetic reconceptualizes contemporary Syrian politics, authoritarianism, and cultural life. Engaging rich original sources—novels, films, and cultural periodicals—Weiss highlights themes crucial to the making of contemporary Syria: heroism and leadership, gender and power, comedy and ideology, surveillance and the senses, witnessing and temporality, and death and the imagination. Revolutions Aesthetic places front and center the struggle around aesthetic ideology that has been key to the constitution of state, society, and culture in Syria over the course of the past fifty years.

The Middle East
The Middle East

Author: Ellen Lust

Publisher: CQ Press

Published: 2023-02-01

Total Pages: 1342

ISBN-13: 1071844482

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In the The Middle East, Sixteenth Edition, Ellen Lust brings important new coverage to this comprehensive, balanced, and superbly researched text. In clear prose, Lust and her outstanding contributors explain the landscape of this changing region by examining both regional trends and individual countries. The Sixteenth Edition adds a chapter on Sudan, and other country chapters have been streamlined and fully updated to reflect domestic, regional, and international changes of the past three years. This best-selling text offers a wealth of information to help readers not only comprehend more fully the world around them, but also recognize and formulate policies that can more successfully engage the vitally important Middle East.

Cycle of Fear
Cycle of Fear

Author: Leon Goldsmith

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1849046107

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In early 2011 an elderly Alawite shaykh lamented the long history of oppression and aggression against his people. Against such collective memories the Syrian uprising was viewed by many Alawites, and observers, as a revanchist Sunni Muslim movement and the gravest threat yet to the unorthodox Shi'a sub-sect. This explained why the Alawites largely remained loyal to the Ba'athist regime of Bashar al-Asad. But was Alawite history really a constant tale of oppression and was the Syrian uprising of 2011 really an existential threat to the Alawites? This book surveys Alawite history from the sect's inception in Abbasid Iraq up to the start of the uprising in 2011. The book shows how Alawite identity and political behaviour have been shaped by a cycle of insecurity that has prevented the group from achieving either genuine social integration or long term security. Rather than being the gravest threat yet to the sect, the Syrian uprising, in the context of the Arab Spring, was quite possibly a historic opportunity for the Alawites to finally break free from their cycle of fear.

Syria
Syria

Author: Samer N. Abboud

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-11-12

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0745698018

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Syria was once one of the Middle Easts most stable states. Today it is a country on its knees. Almost 200,000 people are estimated to have died in its bloody internal conflict and, as the violence intensifies, Syrias future looks bleak. In this timely book, Samer Abboud provides an in-depth analysis of Syrias descent into civil war. He unravels the complex and multi-layered causes of the current political and military stalemate - from rebel fragmentation to the differing roles of international actors, and the rise of competing centers of power throughout the country. Rebel in-fighting and the lack of a centralizing authority, he contends, have exacerbated Syrias fragmentation and fragility. This, in turn, has aided the survival of the Assad regime, contributed to the upsurge of sectarianism, and led to a major humanitarian crisis as nine million Syrians have been forced to flee their homes. A resolution to the Syrian conflict seems unlikely in the short-term as the major actors remains committed to a military solution. As this situation persists, the continued fighting is reshaping Syrias borders and will have repercussions on the wider Middle East for decades to come.