Actors and Dynamics in the Syrian Conflict's Middle Phase: Between Contentious Politics, Militarization and Regime Resilience

This volume covers the "middle" time period of the Syrian uprising, roughly from 2012 when Syria’s peaceful protest began to mutate into a violent insurgency and civil war until roughly 2018 when the conflict took on features of a "frozen conflict".

The middle period was important as one of key junctures or turning points when the struggle could have reached rather different outcomes. Non-violent protest failed to drive democratization and turned into violent insurrection but revolution from below also failed as did regime counter-insurgency, leaving protracted civil war the default outcome. Second, the consequences of civil war became evident with six themes: failing statehood coexisted with regime resilience; rebel governance emerged as a viable challenge to the regime; social forces were sharply polarized; external actors exacerbated internal divisions; a predatory war economy emerged; and intense violence led to massive displacement of the population.

Taking an innovative and interdisciplinary approach that seeks to capture the full complexity of the phenomenon, this book contributes significantly to our understanding of the Syrian conflict, therefore it will be of interest to academics, students, journalists and policy-makers interested in the Syrian civil war.

Jasmine K. Gani is Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations and Co-Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her research, supervision, and teaching focus on three main areas: the history of European and US empires in the Middle East and Asia, with particular focus on US-Syrian relations; ideologies and social movements in the Middle East; and postcolonial thought and history. She is the author of The Role of Ideology in Syrian-US Relations: Conflict and Cooperation, and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook on the Middle East and North Africa State and States System (with Raymond Hinnebusch).

Raymond Hinnebusch is professor of international relations and Middle East politics and founder and Co-Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies at the University of St. Andrews. His works include Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Ba’thist Syria (1990) and Syria: Revolution from Above (Routledge: 2001); he co-edited Syria: From Reform to Revolt, (Syracuse, 2014); The Syrian Uprising: Domestic Factors and Early Trajectory (Routledge 2018) and The War for Syria: Regional and International Factors in the Syrian Conflict (Routledge 2019), and edited After the Arab Uprisings: Between Democratization, Counter-revolution and State Failure (Routledge 2016).