ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the peasant union as a case study of the operation of the Barth's populist corporatism. Where reform land was being distributed, the union tried to use it to win over peasants; the fledgling peasant unions were deliberately associated with it and, after 1966 assumed, together with local party cadres and ministerial technicians, a direct role in land distribution. The peasant union goes through an elaborate internal policy process which, in principle, is supposed to mobilize peasant opinion behind party goals and yet, within these limits, provide for the aggregation of peasant demands into the national policy process. Yet the formal privileged access of the peasant union, while a major advance from the pre-Ba'th era, gives only the potential for interest articulation and many other factors determine whether it will be effective. The peasant union is supposed to mobilize the peasants for the implementation of the regime's agrarian policies and for self-management of their own affairs.
