ABSTRACT
The authoritarian and personalist Syrian regime is mostly held together thanks to the solidity of the alliance between the Ba’ath Arab Socialist party, which has been ruling the country since 1963, and the armed forces, which have held power since 1966. Both are backed by a disproportional bureaucratic apparatus and a solid political and economic oligarchy. Although the Alawis’ overrepresentation is the usual trend within the circles of power (even though they only represent 12 percent of the whole population), it is nonetheless true that a good share of the positions are held by Sunni Muslim Arabs (nearly 65 percent of the population). As will be further examined, the true nature of the Syrian power system does not lie so much in confessional, ideological or regionalist factors but in clan or kinship; its true essence is indeed to be found in the – nuclear and extended – Assad family and their whole network of strategic alliances.
