Patronage and Clientelism in Bashar’s Social Market Economy

Bashar al-Asad's period in office was marked by an economic liberalisation programme aimed at unleashing competition though not at the expense of social welfare. While presented as a bold, visionary initiative, the programme — like previous rounds of economic reform in the period of Bashar's father — was in fact reactive. The regime understood that Syria's sclerotic, command economy had failed; that the oil revenues that kept it afloat would soon end; and that private enterprise offered the only relief. Until 2005, while Bashar was consolidating his position, the reforms were slow, halting and contradictory, and little different in style and substance from those introduced by his father. The main beneficiaries were corrupt regime insiders operating in alliance with a new business class whose increasingly ostentatious wealth was based on monopolies rather than competition. After 2005, under the stewardship of Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah al-Dardari, the liberalisation intensified, with the aim of creating a “social market economy”. The process was severely hampered by fierce opposition from the Ba’ath Party and other key pillars of the state, and by the manoeuvrings of the entrenched corrupt business networks that embraced reforms from which they would benefit while resisting others bitterly. Real progress was nevertheless achieved, at least at the macro level, but at the cost of widening wealth disparities and without any impact on endemic unemployment

Clientelism · Economics · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Islamic Studies and History · Law

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