Charities and Politics in Bashar al-Asad's Syria: The Unravelling of the Old Social Contract

by Laura Ruiz de Elvira, Keith Hodson (Translator)

Overview

Charities and Politics in Bashar al-Asad’s Syria analyses the renewal and revival of the role of Syrian charities during Bashar al-Asad’s first ten years in power (2000-2010) in order to understand the political engineering deployed by the Syrian regime in the decade prior to the uprising. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2007 and 2010, as well as on more than fifty interviews and other secondary sources, this book is the first comprehensive study of the country’s poorly known sector of associations and charitable organisations at the beginning of the 21st century. It provides first‐hand accounts of crucial issues that did not receive scholarly attention before the uprising – such as the shift in state–society relations, the opening of the civic arena, the partial outsourcing of welfare provision and social responsibilities and, eventually, the unravelling of the old social contract, which the protest movement dramatically brought to the forefront in 2011. By carrying out a unique analysis of the management of civil society by state institutions and the First Lady’s government-operated NGOs, it also provides keys to understanding both the resilience of Bashar al-Asad’s authoritarian regime in the 2000s and the simultaneous weakening of its credibility amongst the population.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399528207
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	12/31/2024
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Laura Ruiz de Elvira is a research fellow at the IRD (Ceped, Universityé Paris Cité). She received her PhD with distinction from the EHESS (Paris) and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2013. A specialist in charitable practices, social policies, social movement studies, and authoritarianism, particularly in Syria and Tunisia, she is the Principal Investigator of the ERC StG project LIVE – AR (The Subsequent Lives of Arab Revolutionaries). She has co-edited Les mondes de la bien-faisance (CNRS Editions, 2021) and Clientelism and Patronage in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge, 2018). She is also the author of Vers la fin du contrat social en Syrie (Karthala, 2019) and Civil Society and the State in Syria: The Outsourcing of Social Responsibility (Lynne Rienner, 2012; with Tina Zintl).

Keith Hodson is a translator and proof reader. He has worked with numerous French scientific research institutes and his translations include The Theory of Change and Response by Véronique Petit and Yves Charbit, Labour: A Heterodox Approach by Jean Vercherand and The conditions of efficiency of a PPP for public finances by Alain Bonnafous.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Syrian Charities as a Scientific Object
1. Syrian Charities in the Twentieth Century
2. Civil Society and Charitities in Bashar al-Asad’s Era
3. Collective Action and Funding Strategies of Syrian Charities
4. Getting Committed in Syrian Charitable Associations
5. Local Strategies through a Hirschmanian Lens
6. Participation and Outsourcing: A New Grammar of Public Action in Syria
7. The State as Conceiver, Legislator and Manager
8. The Controlling, Disciplining and Repressive State
Conclusion: The Syrian Uprising or the Unravelling of the Social Contract

Appendix 1 Map of the Population of the Main Syrian Cities
Appendix 2 Summary Table of the Syrian Associations Visited
Appendix 3 Signs and Banners from Syrian Charities
Appendix 4 Brochures from Syrian Charities
Appendix 5 Products of Syrian Charities
Appendix 6 Extracts from the English Version of the Tenth Five-Year Plan of the Syrian Arab Republic (Chapter 6, Section 4)
Appendix 7 Reports and Balance Sheets from Syrian Charities
Appendix 8 Table of Public Finances (2003–9)
Appendix 9 Syrian Press
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

This study provides a powerful and much-needed correction to those studying the Syrian uprising and war with little appreciation of the pre-2011 era. Laura Ruiz de Elvira is the person to do it as her research on the country encompasses nearly two decades. Charities and Politics in Bashar al-Asad's Syria presents a narrative that is illuminating, heartbreaking and hopeful all at once.

Reinoud Leenders