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Political Recruitment and Socialization in Syria: The case of the Revolutionary Youth Federation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Raymond A. Hinnebusch
Raymond A. Hinnebusch
Affiliation:
The American University in CarioCairo, Egypt
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Extract

Over the last fifteen years the Syrian Ba'th Party has succeeded-in a country previously known for weak governments and military coups-not only in entrenching a strong relatively stable system of single party rule, but also in launching its own variety of socialist and modernizing revolution. The explanation of this transformation in the nature of Syrian political life is one of the interesting problems of contemporary Syrian and Middle Eastern politics. What accounts for it? This essay will explore one approach to a partial explanation: a study of party recruitment and socialization practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 143 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

NOTES

1 The importance of a “reliable group of persons … primarily oriented to the execution of the supreme authority's general policy and specific commands” is stressed by Weber (Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, New York, 1964, pp. 324–25), while Lenin places great importance on the development of a body of “professional revolutionaries” to lead and organize the masses.Google Scholar

2 The best general discussion of Ba'thist organizational doctrine is to be found in National Leadership, The Ba'th Arab Socialist Party, Some Theoretical Points of Departure, Damascus, 1973, pp. 57–102.Google Scholar

3 In 1971, this policy was altered to include recruitment through the other small parties participating in the National Progressive Front, but the Ba'th Party retained controlling voice in this institution.Google Scholar

4 The 8th National Congress in May 1965 specified the specialized task of the party apparatus: “The Sphere of work for the Party apparatus … lies in popular and mass organization”. —al-Qaumiyya, Qiyâd, Bayânât, 1965, p. 35.Google Scholar

5 “Resolutions of the 6th National Congress”, in Arab Political Documents, 1963, Beirut, 1964, p. 440.Google Scholar

6 Party reports; discussions, and observations in Syria.Google Scholar

7 Discussions, party militant, Damascus, 1974.Google Scholar

8 “Statutes of the Arab Ba'th Socialist Party,” in Arab Political Documents, 1963, Beirut, 1964, pp. 445–461.Google Scholar

9 al-Qaumiyya, Qiyâd, al-Nizām al-Dākhli, 1968, and al-Nizâm al-Dâkhalī, 1971. (Party Rules).Google Scholar

10 Ibid.

11 According to figures from (captured) Ba'thi records published by Ben-Tsur, Avraham, “The Composition of the Membership of the Ba'th Party in the Kuneitra Region,” The New East, 18 (1968), pp. 269–73, of the 2219 members of the Quneitra branch, only 60 were full members in 1967.Google Scholar

12 Interview, Director of the Cultural Bureau, National Command, Damascus, 1974. Continuous socialization, especially in the 1966–70 period made considerable demands on members' time, and until 1971 all were required to take training in arms with the Popular Army. Permanent party schools exist at the provincial level as well as at the center, and according to the head of the Damascus Province School (which also serves party branches among the Palestinians and security forces) two-month courses for 300 cadres are held yearly in his institution. The writer saw educational manuals on such topics as agrarian reform implementation, union organization, development of Zionism, socialist transformation, imperialism, etc.Google Scholar

13 Party Rules.Google Scholar

14 Discussion, party militant, Damascus, 1974.Google Scholar

15 The call for new elections is not purely a nominal phenomenon. Top leaders have been known to dissolve lower level organs only to have the old leaders repeatedly returned in subsequent elections.Google Scholar

16 Party Rules.Google Scholar

17 According to Ben-Tzur's figures (see above) there were 2219 members in the Quneitra branch in 1967 which is about 4 percent of the adult population of the province. According to party figures in another district which the writer was able to examine in 1974, the party had a membership of about 2000 out of an adult population of less than 50,000-again a percentage of about 4 percent. If this proportion holds throughout the country, and there is no reason to think it does not, total party membership can be estimated at about 107,185. By comparison, it may be noted that the Chinese Communist Party constitutes about 2.4 percent of the adult population and the CPSU about 7 percent in their respective countries.Google Scholar

18 Calculated on the 1970 census, Central Bureau of Statistics, Population Census in the Syrian Arab Republic, 1970, Vol I, Damascus.Google Scholar

19 Discussions, Party Militant, Damascus, 1974.Google Scholar

20 Rabinovich, , Syria Under the Ba'th, 1963–66, New York, 1972, quotes a party report which refers to the “difficult phase” following the coup during which the urgency of expansion “made it impossible at the time to insist on objective standards”, and that “friendship, family relationship … were the basis of admission, which led to the infiltration of elements alien and strange to the Party's mentality …”Google Scholar

21 Aflaq and Bitar both complained (at a time when their rivals were chipping awy at their power) of persons who “leaped” to the levers of power. The most dramatic case of such rapid mobility by an undesirable element, was that of the Israeli spy, Eli Cohen, alias Kamal Taabet, who, as the protege of a important Bathi officer, hurdled over the one year helpers' period of preparation, was introduced to the party Secretary-General, Aflaq, and was soon elected to the command of the basic level organ in his neighborhood. Before his discovery 1½ years later, he seems to have made it to the leadership of the provincial level party branch.Google Scholar See Aldouby, Zwy and Ballinger, Jerrold, The Shattered Silence, New York, 1971, pp. 227–230.Google Scholar

22 For example, the dispute between moderates and radicals over the proper policy toward the Syrian upper and middle classes was naturally reflected in conflict over the suitable social origins of members. In 1966, the radicals won out and the upper and perhaps upper middle classes were excluded from membership, but after 1971 this may have changed again.Google Scholar

23 This was indicated by organizational charts at the union headquarters. In trips throughout the Syrian countryside the writer also had the opportunity to verify the existence of local organizations in many villages.Google Scholar

24 Qiyâd al-Ittihad, al-Niẓâm al-Dâkhalī.Google Scholar

25 Ibid.

26 A steady flow of membership applications seems to flow into headquarters.Google Scholar

27 al-NiẓâmGoogle Scholar

28 Observations at union congresses.Google Scholar

29 The writer discussed the activities of the union with party youth, had the opportunity to observe the formation of programs at congresses, and reviewed the party plan for the year with the President of the Federation, Damascus, 1974. A good example of the constraints put on activity by the youth from above was the refusal to one branch of permission to publish a branch magazine on the grounds that it would have to be censored by the central headquarters—a task which was evidently thought to be too much trouble.Google Scholar

30 This survey was given as part of a larger program of research done on the Syrian political system with the permission and cooperation of the National Command of the ruling Ba'th Party in 1974. As the youth organization was holding a series of meetings at the time of the writer's stay in Syria, the opportunity arose to distribute questionnaires to those attending, of which 72 were returned. The writer administered the questionnaires personally and observed no evidence of attempts to control or bias responses. The questionnaires were given in three meetings in Katana, Ghouta-Sharqiyya, and Douma, all in the province of Rural Damascus. As such, the sample cannot be held to be “representative” of the countrywide organization in a technical sense. The writer believes the results to be generally relevant to Syria as a whole, but the reader should take account of two characteristics which somewhat distinguish the area of the survey; namely, that this province is probably the most socially mobilized area outside the cities, but secondly that it has not been a notable stronghold of Ba'thist recruitment. Given these factors, conclusions drawn in the analysis as regards the organization as a whole are offered as only tentative. In order to guard against the possibility that some relationships, given the relatively small sample size (N = 72), resulted from purely random chance, those associations not statistically significant at the .05 level as measured by Chi-square, were not used unless specifically noted.Google Scholar

31 The estimated percentages of the population in the class categories were derived from the 1970 Population Census; they are only estimates as class breakdowns are not given in the census and the writer had to work from occupational breakdowns. These categories were devised by asking respondants if their fathers owned property and employed persons, rather than asking them to place themselves in the stratification system. As such, those in the “Upper and middle classes” are so classified, not necessarily because they are very wealthy (though they may be) but because they control sufficient property to be able to hire the labor of others. According to Shebîbe rules, persons of “social origins hostile to organization goals” are restricted from membership. It may be that this restriction is taken to refer to the old elite of wealth and status rather than persons in the “upper strata” as defined here, as persons who hire labor do get admitted to the organization.Google Scholar

32 These figures do correspond to the picture of the typical party member which emerges from historical study of the party's development, from the background profiles of party leaders which are available, and from observation and discussions in Syria. The typical Ba'thist comes from the rural small town lower middle class or from the peasantry. According to Van Dusen the current party elite are “ex-peasants”, from the lowest socio-economic strata able to get a high school education.Google Scholar See Van Dusen, Michael H., “Syria: Downfall of a Traditional Elite” in Tachau, Frank (Ed.), Political Elites and Political Modernization in the Middle East (Cambridge, 1975).Google Scholar

33 The urban/rural differentiation is taken from the Census for this district, while the Ba'th break down derives from our former calculation of the proportion of the population recruited into the party.Google Scholar

34 The ideological scale was constructed by giving each respondant points for each question according to whether they gave the ideologically correct response, a middle response, or an incorrect response, with scores on each question being added to form a total score. The nationalism scale was constructed in the same way, but using only questions 1 and 2, the socialism scale by using questions 3–6, and the secularism scale relying on questions 8–9.Google Scholar

35 Because only five to six cases fall into the upper stratum in these cross-tabulations, conclusions about them must be regarded with caution. For example, if a statistic sensitive to these skewed marginal distributions is used to describe the relation between class and socialist attitudes, the result is numerically lower (G = .40, but Tau-B = .22). The orientations attributed to the upper classes by these associations can probably be taken as real, however. More impressionistic evidence about their attitudes is congruent with these findings. Further, throughout the study, the orientations of this stratum are consistently in the same direction. Also one other study known to the author on the attitudes of Syrians confirms some of the findings of this survey in regard to the distribution of attitudes between social groups.Google Scholar See Abyad, Malakah, “Values of Syrian Youth: A Study Based on Syrian Students in Damascus University,” Master's Thesis, American University of Beirut, 1968.Google Scholar

36 In order to keep the differences between mobilizational regimes in perspective, however, it should be noted that Ba'th mobilizational and penetrative efforts pale in comparison to that of the Chinese Communist Party whose social composition is 80 percent workers or peasants-a proportion much closer to the actual population distribution than is the case with the Ba'th.Google Scholar

37 The justification for identifying the three clusters indicated in Table 10 rests principally on the fact that those items enclosed in each triangle tend to inter-correlate positively with each other, while correlating negatively with other items. Number 10, which did not correlate and number 11, picked only twice, were dropped.Google Scholar

38 Each respondent was given one point on each motivation type for each pick which corresponded to that particular motivation.Google Scholar

39 The participation index was constructed from questions asking respondents the amount of time spent in party work, committees served on, and offices held. The efficacy index was constructed from the standard questions regarding what respondants would do if they believed a decision taken by the government was incorrect, whether they had ever done anything to try to correct such a decision, and whether they belieyed politics too complicated for ordinary people.Google Scholar

40 For an interesting study of a motivational pattern which could be called “careerist” active in recruitment of communists in Malaya who later defected to the government, see Pye, Lucian, Guerilla Communism in Malaya: Its Social and Political Meanings (Princeton, 1956).Google Scholar

41 Barnes, Samuel H., “Party Democracy and the Logic of Collective Action” in Crotty, William J. (Ed.), Approaches to the Study of Party Organization, Boston, 1968.Google Scholar

43 Ba'thi militant, Damascus, 1974.Google Scholar

44 Another Ba'thi militant, Damascus, 1974.Google Scholar

45 Interviews with provincial and district level party executives, 1974.Google Scholar

46 Before the Ba'th, Syria was, as measured on Russett's scale of instability, the most unstable country in the world. See Russell, Bruce M., et al. , Yale Handbook of Social and Political indicators (New Haven, 1964).Google Scholar