Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances: Repression and Revolution from Damascus Spring to Arab Spring

Brownlee, Billie Jeanne

doi:10.1080/13629395.2013.761482

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…3 It is indicative that Alawites constituted the vast majority of career soldiers and officers, and totally dominated the General Staff. It is telling that these strata of career-oriented soldiers and officers were those who also benefited professionally and socially at both the individual and communal levels (Faksh, 1984;Wieland, 2012). This system of social embeddedness of the elite army was a reflection of the overall Alawite-dominated regime, to the point of perceiving their actual survival as inextricably linked to the survival of Assad's regime particularly, and Alawite control more generally.…”

Section: The Syrian Cycle Of Popular Contention (17 February To 25 Ap...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When parents approached the local chief of political security and pleaded for the release of their kids who were arrested and tortured by the secret police for painting anti-government graffiti, they were met with degrading and humiliating responses (Donker, 2018;Leenders, 2012). According to Wieland (2012), responses, like "Make new ones! And if you don't know how to do it, send over your women and we'll help you" .…”

Section: The Syrian Cycle Of Popular Contention (17 February To 25 Ap...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Army embeddedness, political opportunities and threats, and the dynamics of contention: Understanding the varying role of the armed forces in the Egyptian, Syrian, and Libyan 2011 revolts

Alimi

2022

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

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In many Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, the army has traditionally been a central pillar of the authoritarian regimes, responsible for the security and integrity of the state and a symbol of national sovereignty and social unity. Nevertheless, the 2011 Arab revolts witnessed stark differences in the response of the armies. This article argues that a relational reading of the Structure of Political Opportunities and Threats, particularly when its dimension of the state’s capacity and propensity for repression is informed by a MENA-salient regime feature—army embeddedness—offers a compelling solution to the puzzle. An analysis of the Egyptian, Syrian, and Libyan episodes of contention, based on a comparative method that combines mechanism-based process tracing and typological theorizing, demonstrates the theoretical payoffs of this sensitized dimension. Cross-case similarities underscore the value of thinking about the army as a full-fledge agent embedded within a web of relations with social and political forces. Specifically, findings reveal how army embeddedness shapes the respective operation and effect of the mechanisms “political opportunities” and “political threats,” and highlight the importance of differentiating between the state’s capacity and the state’s propensity for repression. Within-case variations highlight the historically specific development of such embeddedness and how it plays out distinctively in each case, forming different scenarios of high and low capacity and propensity for repression.

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Section: The Syrian Cycle Of Popular Contention (17 February To 25 Ap...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Syrian Cycle Of Popular Contention (17 February To 25 Ap...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Army embeddedness, political opportunities and threats, and the dynamics of contention: Understanding the varying role of the armed forces in the Egyptian, Syrian, and Libyan 2011 revolts

Alimi

2022

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

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“…Between March and June 2012, millions of tweets were sent within Syria, revealing the details of the conflict suppressed by the government. A full account of the history of the Arab Spring is outside of the scope of the current article; more information can be found in [6] and [7].…”

Section: Syria In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online social cohesion reflects real-world group action in Syria during the Arab Spring

Chiovaro

Windsor

et al. 2021

PLoS ONE

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In recent years, political activists have taken to social media platforms to rapidly reach broad audiences. Despite the prevalence of micro-blogging in these sociopolitical movements, the degree to which virtual mobilization reflects or drives real-world movements is unclear. Here, we explore the dynamics of real-world events and Twitter social cohesion in Syria during the Arab Spring. Using the nonlinear methods cross-recurrence quantification analysis and windowed cross-recurrence quantification analysis, we investigate if frequency of events of different intensities are coupled with social cohesion found in Syrian tweets. Results indicate that online social cohesion is coupled with the counts of all, positive, and negative events each day but shows a decreased connection to negative events when outwardly directed events (i.e., source events) were considered. We conclude with a discussion of implications and applications of nonlinear methods in political science research.

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“…At the same time, high population growth in Syria was challenging the labour market, leading to an unemployment rate of up to 30 per cent. Moreover, between 11 per cent and 30 per cent of the population lived under the poverty line, in particular in the rural areas (Wieland 2012). As policies mainly favoured the economic centres of Aleppo and Damascus, this led to high geographical discrepancies and marginalisation of the suburbs and rural or peripheral regions of the country (al-Haj Saleh, 2017).…”

Section: Roots Of the Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As policies mainly favoured the economic centres of Aleppo and Damascus, this led to high geographical discrepancies and marginalisation of the suburbs and rural or peripheral regions of the country (al-Haj Saleh, 2017). Hence, the ruling of Bashar al-Assad was characterised by many reform attempts and as many setbacks, and therefore as a 'decade of lost chances' (Wieland, 2012). Despite several attempts to transform the country into a modern social market economy with more political freedoms, Bashar al-Assad heavily relied on key players in the apparatus of his father.…”

Section: Roots Of the Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diaspora mobilisation in a conflict setting

Ragab

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Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances: Repression and Revolution from Damascus Spring to Arab Spring

Cited by 4 publications

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Army embeddedness, political opportunities and threats, and the dynamics of contention: Understanding the varying role of the armed forces in the Egyptian, Syrian, and Libyan 2011 revolts

Army embeddedness, political opportunities and threats, and the dynamics of contention: Understanding the varying role of the armed forces in the Egyptian, Syrian, and Libyan 2011 revolts

Online social cohesion reflects real-world group action in Syria during the Arab Spring

Diaspora mobilisation in a conflict setting

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