"The State and the Political Economy of Reform in Syria."New publication by Søren SchmidtWith Professor Raymond Hinnebusch, published in St. Andrews Papers on Contemporary Syria Søren Schmidt’s chapter in this publication applies the “new institutionalist” approach and shows how the institutional characteristics of the Syrian state influence significantly the way economic liberalization policies works. Contrary to standard blueprints for economic liberalization, the paper shows that economic liberalization produces perverse and socially sub-optimal outcomes, when it takes place in an institutional setting like the Syrian. The relevance of this study goes therefore beyond the specific case of Syria and is of wider comparative interest. It highlights in which ways the impact of economic liberalization depends critically on the specific historical-institutional context in which it takes place. The analysis emphasizes the capacity of political institutions for creating structural constraints, impacting on key social actors and leading to socially-sub-optimal outcomes. The chapter applies an approach that takes into account both the role of structural factors and political agency, hence moving beyond explanations that are over-structural or alternatively display a rather rigid narrow understanding of “rational choice” where the role of structural conditions or constraints are totally deemphasized. The chapter provides six specific case studies of state-market interaction based on primary sources on crucial contemporary issues in Syrian economic development. The cases comprise the planned free trade regime with the EU, the banking-sector reforms and the role of regime connected business tycoons in the economy. These case studies analyses the specific institutional dilemmas related to each issue and how the absence of solutions to such dilemmas result in negative outcomes. The cases give insight into the ‘games’ played by economic actors and ‘politicos’ in Syria as well as the interplay between these ‘games’ and how the rules of these games are structured (i.e. political and economic institutions). Link to the publication. |
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