4 - Institutional Ecologies during State Atrophy: The Religious Field as Case Study

Summary

The devolution of the monopoly of violence and the shrinking of the state's regulatory capacity have repercussions that are beyond the military field. The prominence of the religious field illustrates this reality. This chapter looks at the socio-economic place and political role of religion as an institutional domain under conditions of state atrophy. The religious domain witnessed significant transformations in the variety of functions it fulfilled. At the same time, the capacity and presence of religious actors increased, in terms of fulfilling socio-economic and political functions.

The prominence of the religious domain is connected to institutional developments in other domains. The endowment of structuring, regulating and mobilising functions to religion in Syria after the year 2000 materialised through its expansion in public services such as aid, relief and other forms of municipal services, while the state's civic (citizenship-based modelling of political community) and developmental (equitable economic development and social welfare) functions continued to diminish. The devolution in state functions was not initiated by the state atrophy witnessed after 2011. Devolution of socio-economic public functions, from state institutions towards private interest, was underway in economic and religious forms since the neoliberal changes after the year 2000. The reconfiguration of the religious field throughout the Syrian conflict is therefore the outcome of the intersection of two sets of conditions: (1) neoliberal modes of government between 2000 and 2011 and (2) state atrophy under conditions of armed conflict since 2011. The first represents government policy to withdraw the state from public functions without compromising its regulatory capacity over other domains and the latter constitutes a period of significantly diminished capacity in service provision. Despite the fact that the two periods represent distinct processes of state atrophy, they nevertheless yielded comparable outcomes. Both periods led to a singular and uni-directional trajectory of a more limited role for the state and an increased role for the religious field in public functions. This translated to a growing strategic significance of religion for the Assad rule.

The specific roles of individual religious actors and organisations in government-controlled and opposition-controlled areas are too vast to be covered in a single chapter. The aim here is to identify shifts in institutional roles rather than present a comprehensive review of the religious domain per se.