ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Ba'thist state-building has generated the seeds of regime erosion and state disintegration due to three interdependent processes. First, intra-regime and regime-society struggles for domination have led to the monopolization of power by a narrow elite, leading to mass political exclusion. Second, to consolidate and reproduce its power, the ruling Ba'thist military elite resorted, like its predecessors, to kinship and regional ties, effectively activating identity and regional cleavages which Ba'thist ideology had hoped to transcend. Third, domestic political exclusion and identity divides have exposed Syria and its regime to external threats and intervention, which have in several episodes reinforced the regime's authoritarian drive and deepened domestic sectarian and political cleavages. The Uprising and the consequent civil war in Syria brought all of its contradictions to the fore: on the one hand it was a break from the past; but on the other hand it was a continuation of a process that started in the 1950s.
