About this item
Highlights
- How do governments contribute to galvanizing public hostility against state institutions?
- Author(s): Harout Akdedian
- 280 Pages
- History, Middle East
Description
About the Book
State Atrophy in Syria highlights how the appropriation of state institutions by public officials limits public capacity to demand accountability from government without having to challenge the state or its institutions.
Book Synopsis
How do governments contribute to galvanizing public hostility against state institutions? And what are the consequences of undermining the state as a strategy for political change?
State Atrophy in Syria highlights how the appropriation of state institutions by public officials limits public capacity to demand accountability from government without having to challenge the state or its institutions. This creates consequential trade-offs for the public. As the Syrian case demonstrates, the undermining of state institutions failed to depose the dictatorship, continuously benefitted Assad's foreign allies, Russia and Iran, and engendered unprecedented levels of predatory practices against the public.
As Syria continues to play a strategic role on the world's political stage, the book outlines the country's tragic decade and derives lessons for state-society relations in Syria and beyond.
Review Quotes
It is gratifying to see how recent methodical reflections on contemporary Syria are bearing fruit, enriched by intensive research, and new analytical departures. Akdedian's granular analysis of state capture, sectarianism, the multiform devolution of state power and authority, of the salience of locality and the virtual effacement of the private/public distinction in many domains, shows these to be dynamic processes with agency, novelty and considerable complexity. Having read this book, it would no longer be conscionable to spin stories of primordialism, nor tropes of return to an authentic past.--Aziz Al-Azmeh, Central European University
This book fills a major gap in the literature on Syria by applying the novel concept of atrophy on the Syrian state and opening up new horizons of research. Akdedian has written an empirically rich, theoretically innovative, and exceptionally well-informed book that impressively straddles different bodies of scholarship.--Uğur Ümit Üngör, NIOD Institute