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Abstract

Trapped in a US-dominated environment, the Syria of Bachar Al-Assad lives under a strong injunction to democratize. What kind of political and social reactions does such international pressure arouse in the domestic arena? The regime itself adopted a reformist stance and pretends to aim at political liberalization. However, it gave priority to economic growth and the kind of unruly capitalism it enhances leaves little hope for a democratic transition. Non Governmental Organizations and secular political parties are caught between governmental strategies of coopation and exclusion. As for the Islamic movements, outlawed for the past 25 years, they might mobilize a frustrated eighty percent of the Sunni population. In this critical juncture, the ruling coalition appears weakened.

Elizabeth Picard, Director of research at the Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman (CNRS-IREMAM), teaches in the Institut d’études politiques of Aix-en-Provence (France). She has published La Nouvelle Dynamique au Moyen-Orient: les relations entre l’Orient arabe et la Turquie (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1993) and Lebanon, A Shattered Country: Myths and Realities of the Wars in Lebanon (New York, Holmes & Meier Publishers, 2002).