Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T18:09:40.749Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Syria under Asad, 1970–78: The Centres of Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

A. I. Dawisha
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

NO OTHER MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRY COULD MATCH THE TURBULENT post-independence history that Syria has experienced. Gaining its independence from France in April 1946, Syria moved uncertainly through the bewildering web of inter-Arab politics until the first military coup in March 1949 propelled it towards the long period of instability that was to follow. Indeed, the coup of November 1970, popularly known as the ‘Corrective Movement’, which installed the Asad regime in power constituted the twenty-first change of government in the twenty-four years of the country's independence. This persistent political turmoil, particularly during the fifties and sixties, contrasts sharply with the stability that Syria enjoyed in the first eight years of this decade.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1978 , pp. 341 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Observer Foreign News Service, 28 November 1975.

2 Guine, Antoine, The New Syria, S. A. M. A., Damascus, 1975, p. 103.Google Scholar

3 Dawisha, A. I., ‘The Transnational Party in Regional Politics: The Arab Baath Party’, Asian Affairs, Vol. 61, 1974, p. 27.Google Scholar

4 See Lenczowski, George, ‘Socialism in Syria’ in Desfosses, Helen and Sevesque, Jacques, Socialism in the Third World, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1975, pp. 55–76.Google Scholar

5 See Dawisha, op. cit., pp. 27–31.

6 The Times, 28 May 1973.

7 Hinnebusch, Raymond A., ‘Local Politics in Syria: Organisation and Mobilisation in Four Village Cases’, Middle East Journal, Vol. 30, 1977, p. 5.Google Scholar

8 British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts, Part IV: The Middle East, (hereafter called SWB), ME/5185/A/6–7, 14 April 1976.

9 Kiernan, Thomas, The Arabs: Their History, Aims, and Challenge to the Industrialized World, Little Brown and Company, Boston, 1975, p. 297.Google Scholar

10 Middle East, May 1977, p. 29.

11 Syrian Constitution, Articles 3, 112. Quoted in McLaurin, R. D., et al., Foreign Policy Making in the Middle East, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1977, p. 228.Google Scholar

12 SWB, ME/4882/A/3, 19 April 1975.

13 See for example, SWB, ME/4774/A/8–9, 6 August 1975, SWB, ME/5014/A/7, 23 September 1975; SWB, ME/5015/A/2–3, 24 September 1975.

14 International Herald Tribune, 2 September 1974.

15 The Financial Times, 6 April 1975.

16 The Guardian, 2 August 1976.

17 Binder, Leonard, ‘Political Recruitment and Participation in Egypt’, in La Palombara, J. and Wiener, Myron (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1966, p. 227.Google Scholar

18 New York Times, 9 August, 1976.

19 See for example, The Financial Times, 18 May 1976; The Times, 21 May 1976; International Herald Tribune, 5 June 1976.

20 Interview with the Syrian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Mr Adnan Omran, 7 October 1977.

21 The importance of the party in the decision-making process was repeatedly stressed in a number of interviews conducted in Damascus, including one with the Minister of Information, Ahmed Iskander Ahmed, on 13 January 1978 and with the President’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs, Dr Adib al-Dawoodi, on 12 January 1978.

22 Brecher, Michael, The Foreign Policy System of Israel: Setting, Images Processes, Oxford University Press, London, 1972, p. 9.Google Scholar

23 Al-Hayat, Beirut, 25 February 1966.

24 Petran, Tabitha, Syria, Ernest Benn Ltd., London, 1972, p. 248.Google Scholar

25 The Times, 4 November 1970.

26 Petran, op. cit., p. 235.

27 McLaurin, op. cit., pp. 237, 267.

28 New York Times, 2 August 1976; The Guardian, 2 August 1976.

29 Petran, op. cit., p. 234.

30 SWB, ME/4976/A/3, 8 August 1975.

31 See Dawisha, A. I., Egypt in the Arab World: The Elements of Foreign Policy, Macmillan, London, 1976, pp. 97–107.Google Scholar