As the Syrian conflict continues, Bassam Haddad reviews the complexity of the crisis as he addresses the structural causes of the initial uprising and the issue of sectarianism. Read part 1 here.

Amid the mounting and tragic violence, loss of life, and loss of Syria, it seems difficult to write about history and causes. Yet it is equally difficult to write critically about the current chaos, precisely because of the information gap. One also wonders, what can be said about Syria anymore? In this vein, and following the despair in first part of this article, I retreat to the basics, to what we think we know a little better. In the first part, I addressed what I called "Stubborn Factors" that animate the uprising, and discussed the complexity of the Syrian case with an eye to its regional role. Here, I address some structural causes of the uprising. The next and final post will address the question of sectarianism.

Some Structural Causes of the Syrian Uprising

A methodological note on causality is in order:

Most serious treatments of this topic — those based on long-term historical and analytical engagement with developments in Syria — will remain inadequate, including this one. The first objective is to evade the outlandish treatments (those proceeding from some idiosyncratic political or cultural essence) and monist treatments (those that reduce outcomes to one variable). The second objective is to recognize the limits of our ability as informed analysts in pinning down the right mixture of weighted variables in explaining such outcomes. But explanatory despair should not be the takeaway from these precautions. The trick is to refine the conversation on the question of causes, with time. Revolutions, or uprisings, are not a science — even according to Political Scientists. But we surely can do much better than the outlandish and the monist.

My first task is to disembody the notion of the “Middle East” or even the “Arab World,” as we often unintentionally speak of the uprisings across the region in monolithic terms. 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. Even when we do have a nuanced analysis, we forget that having the necessary ingredients has not been sufficient to produce the kind of mass mobilization that we are now associating with revolutions and uprisings. Focusing too much on structure without recognizing agency and its role in making people go to the streets and fight bullets with their bodies (at first, that is), is like watching the right ingredients of a particular recipe lying around the kitchen table, with no meal in sight. In short, there is much that cannot be predicted, to the chagrin of social scientists. Hence, the advice for analytical modesty.

In the Syrian case, facile and essentially inadequate arguments often take the form of the old and tired “sectarianism” or “sectarian rule” argument. Where the Alawite minority is pitted against the Sunni majority — and usually without much mention of history and legacy of interaction prior to the coming to power of the Ba`ath Party. Even more sophisticated arguments that recognize the inadequacy of the “sectarianism” narrative, fail to indicate that almost half of Syrian society is itself comprised of minorities of sorts. Finally, in the Syrian case in particular, the question of Syria’s regional role and “resistance to imperialism” credentials is vexing on two opposite fronts. First, it 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. On the other hand, those oblivious to such nationalist credentials (which do exist, and reasonable analysts can debate their extent), or those who stand opposite to what such credentials stand for, proceed as though what goes on in Syria is unrelated to the existence and policies of equally unsavory actors nearby and beyond, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United States.

All the above—the generic political, economic, and communal arguments, or the “resistance” factor — often form an amorphous explanatory lens through which the battle on the ground is interpreted. In most narratives, we end up focusing on symptoms rather than tangible causes that instigated the confrontation — for the post-initial period has taken a life of its own. It is true that regional and international interference, clouds the domestic setting and often alters the “conflict.” But such factors should be integrated into the analysis to reveal the complexity of the Syrian case, and should not simply replace or hijack the essential narrative of causes for the uprising. If the external forces lined up against the Syrian regime are problematic, it does not mean that the original anti-regime sentiment is problematic: if the goals of overthrowing the regime are aligned, the motives do not have to be so. And this is a major part of the current dilemma: political, analytical, and humanitarian.

Separating the Immediate from the Structural

One way out of this politico-analytical web is to separate the two tasks into two less messy questions: first, what caused the uprising? And second, what perpetuates the uprising? The answers are different. The first deals primarily with local factors and the second with a combination of factors tilting to external ones.

Even in dealing with the first question of causes, we must separate the structural from the circumstantial, by separating between the large structural reservoir of causes that built over time and the immediate causes that instigated social mobilization on a large scale in Syria terms. Herein, I will address the question of structural causes. On the one hand, I have alluded to the second question under the above title “The Evident Complexity of the Syrian Case” (in Part 1), though a more detailed treatment is necessary elsewhere or by someone else. On the other hand, the question of what instigated the uprising is less complex, and merits a detailed treatment once more information is available, though the facts are not too controversial. Inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian experiences just one to two months prior, the narrative of the young kids who called for the regime’s fall on the walls of their school in Dera'a constituted the first flame that ignited the heap of hay accumulating for decades. Surely, the local strongmen’s brutal response guaranteed the wider mobilization there at first, but it was bound to happen after a few such dissenting attempts. The same incident, if occurred one year prior, would have fizzled out within days, if not less. However, the regional domino effect and the continuing collective focus on the broader context gave that incident prominence, while changing the calculus of individuals vis-à-vis the risk and potential success of taking to the streets en mass, especially in the more rural areas and small towns. The rest is bloody history.

Highlighting the Spinal Cord of Structural Causes

The set of structural causes that I would like to highlight, beyond the constant factor of repression, relate to political-economic factors that have engulfed Syria since 1986, when the regime effectively began shifting its social and political alliances from labor to business. Namely, I am referring to the growing relationship in the past few decades between the political and economic elite in Syria, and its continued policy implications for nearly 25 years. This new nexus of power pervades most global political economies, but produces deleterious effects to the extent that the context allows. In many developing countries, including Syria, it is associated with the protracted process related to the unraveling of the state-centered economy, which also constitute the rolling back of redistributive policies on which the masses increasingly relied in the absence of economic growth. I must caution in the same breath against the emphasis on such factors as singular causes for the uprisings, in Syria or elsewhere. Instead, I address this factor as a central, not the only, one. Thus, this cannot be a comprehensive account of structural causes.

Politically, the new nexus of power between the political and economic elite in Syria seems to have buttressed authoritarian rule in Syria over the past two decades, whether or not other factors contributed to this outcome. This is not simply a function of “support” for the status quo by beneficiary elites, for this is the norm nearly everywhere. It is also a form of legitimation of a changing status quo, because the corollary of this particular nexus of power involves various forms of “liberalization” or state retreat. This includes a “budding,” “growing,” or seemingly “vibrant” civil society that may be considered a sign of political “opening;” a “freer” economic environment in which the state gives up its monopoly over some sectors of the economy; and a large “private” sector that purportedly grows at the expense of the state-run “public” sector, giving way to a broader dispersion of resources with economically democratizing effects. Though these outcomes are pleasing to some external actors (including that amorphous conception, “the international community”), they are not felt in any positive manner by the overwhelming majority of the population, who must fend for themselves as public provisions, jobs, and welfare dwindle. Quite the contrary, the majority of the Syrian people have seen their fortunes decline with the deepening of this alliance between state and big business since the mid 1980s.

Economic Policy, Economic Structure, and Social Impact

The apparent social effects of the new elitism and the policies they engendered are even deeper, affecting the lives of most Syrians, and were all too clear before January 2011. Discussed elsewhere in greater detail, the impact of this alliance had a tremendous polarizing effect on Syrian society, one that approaches, if not matches, the pre-Ba'ath era. The effects proceeded at three levels: economic policies, economic structure, and social impact.

It is not too challenging to demonstrate that the policies supported by this new nexus of power are responsible for unduly removing or destroying various forms of social safety nets (such as welfare, subsidies, job provisions) that kept populations afloat or barely above water for decades. If these provisions were not removed altogether, then either their quality has deteriorated significantly (like health, education) or rations have shrunk (bread, flower, sugar). Such drastic changes contributed to two dangerously related phenomena. First, increasing poverty (including absolute poverty) and thus social polarization, whereby societies are increasingly losing their middle classes; and second, economic exclusion from the “market,” a phenomenon contributing to a dramatic increase of the informal sector, or those who are functioning, and living, almost completely outside the market, most of whom inhabit rural areas, small towns, and smaller cities.

Meanwhile regime policies that emphasized the growth of the “private” sector by providing investors with privileges, distinctions, and exemptions did so without exacting reciprocity in practice in terms of added value, employment, and exports. More important is that the most lucrative new economic opportunities were monopolized by regime loyalists, relatives, or partners, all part of the same state-business networks that developed in the 1970s and 1980s and matured in the 1990s. The striking proximity of policy makers to policy takers made rent-seeking and structural corruption extremely efficient, producing a plethora of tailored policies that weakened, fragmented, and taxed the national economy.    

The broader societal impact was hard-felt in some important sectors. The incremental—and not so incremental — goring of workers’ and labor interests in the private and public sectors is another outcome that can be easily traceable to policies and political decisions associated with the new elitism. The shifting of effective alliances from labor to business was part and parcel of the unraveling of state-centered economies. Rights, rules, and regulations increasingly favored business at the expense of labor as time went by, starting in the 1970s (officially or unofficially). Trade/peasant unions and labor organizations were co-opted around that time by corporatist authoritarian systems of representation, but continued to enjoy some privileges. It is true that the political elite started this process of shifting alliances and privileging capital long before business actors became prominent, but the sort of change that took place in the past three decades years has a different character. Earlier, such stripping of labor rights was considered a function of problematic authoritarian arbitrariness, something that is frowned upon socially and viewed as a departure from a social (developmental) contract of sorts. More recently, and before the wave of protests and revolts, the incremental stripping away of labor rights was carried out in the name of “investment” and “growth.”

The ideological context in times gone by was one of a socialist-nationalist coloring that provided a basis for judgment and norms. Hence, social polarization, poverty, and developmental exclusion were considered “wrong” and unacceptable. Today, such disturbing effects have become the new norm, a means to a “better” future, a legitimate station along the way to prosperity and efficiency. All such designations were short-circuited by the uprisings, but it is too early to sound the death-knell for growth formulas that are zero-sum in character. In some, it was this “positive” sounding narrative of the new policies that camouflaged the deep discontent and resentment among the essentially voiceless.

Perhaps most significant were the developmental implications of a new elitism that vehemently emphasized urban development (at the expense of the neglected countryside and its modes of production) and non-productive economic activity, characterized primarily by consumption. The increase in shares of the tourism and service sectors at the expense of manufacturing and agricultural production (associated with land re-reform laws and other regulations) produced different kinds of needs in society. For instance, there was significantly less need for skilled labor, and the educational systems and institutions that would be required to train skilled labor.

Whatever emerged in terms of the “new economy” and information technology fields lagged far behind other countries, was too small and too underdeveloped to substitute for losses in other sectors, and was certainly not competitive internationally. Employment of hundreds of thousands of yearly new entrants became increasingly a pipe-dream, pushing masses of disenfranchised youth to oblivion and circumstance.

An interjectory note is in order, even if unrelated to “policy.” Since 2003, Syria has experienced an unprecedented drought that caused the internal migration of more than 1.2 million people, by conservative estimates. Tens of thousands of families migrated to the cities where they joined the ranks of the unemployed, especially in smaller towns/provinces like Dera'a, Idlib, Homs, and elsewhere. This displacement exacerbated discontent on all those affected, directly and indirectly, and increased the social and regional polarization to levels Syria had not seen since the middle of the last century. Though this was a natural disaster, government’s chronic poor planning and mismanagement of water resources since the 1990s was one opportunity cost of the myriad of polarizing policies pursued during the same period.

The problem of development is not simply about rules and markets and will not be resolved as such. Nor is the panacea of “democracy” sufficient to treat the basic ills. Whatever else is at work, the most egregious problems stem from various and continuing forms of political and economic disempowerment, and denial of self-determination at the individual and collective levels. Most of these problems were/are being exacerbated by a new nexus of power that was as unrelenting as it is/was essentially unchallenged (depending on the case). This new elitism and the policies that came with it were not the only source of discontent and dissent, but a guarantee that they will fester if alternative agencies, institutions, and social contracts do not develop, even under changed regimes. For our purposes here, we cannot underestimate the contribution of these resultant social effects on the structural reservoir that fueled the uprising’s origins, notably in the rural areas and small towns.

In the next post, I will address the thorny issue of sectarianism and sectarian arguments in relation to the Syrian uprising.

*[A version of this article was originally published by Jadaliyya on October 30, 2012].

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.