5 - Syria in the Arab Spring

Summary

The early months of 2011 saw a wave of upheavals across the Middle East and North Africa that became known as the Arab Spring. But despite the spread of resistance campaigns against aging dictators across the Arab-speaking world, not all campaigns employed the same strategy. This chapter reveals how the social ties that underpin challenger groups can explain variation we see across cases in the Middle East as well as the tragic trajectory from civil resistance to repression to civil war within Syria. I begin with a brief discussion of Egypt and Libya, both to provide background context as well as to illustrate their consistency with the theory. I then turn to the case of Syria’s uprising to show how practices of selective social exclusion from the state resulted in a challenger coalition that had substantial grassroots ties to various social groups throughout the country, but limited ties to the regime. This produced a campaign that was initially able to attempt civil resistance, but eventually fractured into violence in the face of extreme state repression.