ABSTRACT
The Ba‘th Party’s 1963 seizure of power marked a major watershed in modern Syrian history: the collapse of the “old regime” which had inherited power in the first independent Syrian state and its replacement by a counter-elite which set out to forge an entirely new type of state and development strategy. The Ba‘th Party has been entrenched as the dominant political force in Syria for decades and, indeed, became the vehicle of a major system transformation. The chapter tries to anticipate how the authoritarian-populist interpretation of the Syrian regime can be accommodated to the central but changing roles of sect, army, class, and national struggle in Syrian politics. Key to understanding populist revolt in a multi-communal setting is how class structure and communalism determine political mobilization. The initial attempt at authority legitimation in authoritarian-populist regimes usually mixes charisma and ideology. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
