Peasant and Bureaucracy in Ba'thist Syria
Raymond A. Hinnebusch
Westview Press
Arguing that the nature of rural society and the role of the peasant are strategic keys to state formation, the author presents a wealth of empirical data on agricultural development policies in Ba‘thist Syria and their consequences for the nature of the Syrian state. He focuses first on policymaking in the agrarian bureaucracy, examining such factors as elite orientations, conflicts over ideology and technocratic planning, and the “lesser” politics of patronage and interest-group activities. The focus of the second section is “policy-implementation-in-action”—the structure, pathologies, programs, and actual performance of bureaucracy. Dr. Hinnebusch looks specifically at agrarian reform and its social consequences, the delivery of services, marketing and pricing policy, agricultural cooperatives, agricultural industrialization and hydraulic projects, and the overall economic performance of agriculture. His conclusion shows that the regime’s thrust remains poised between persistent statist populism and the development of capitalist forces.
Raymond A. Hinnebusch is associate professor and chairman of the Department of Political Science at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of several books and articles, including Egyptian Politics Under Sadat: The Post-Populist Transformation of an Authoritarian-Modernizing State (1985) and Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Ba‘thist Syria: Army, Party, and Peasant (Westview, forthcoming).
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