Text

theses

The ongoing crisis in Syria represents the most recent in a series of disruptive conflicts in the Middle East. The region has experienced both violent and nonviolent upheavals. Nonviolent protests have toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, while violent protest toppled the regime in Libya as Syria grapples with a civil war in its third year. Employing the theoretical lens of political process theory, Syria in particular is examined as a unique case in which a multiplicity of uncoordinated non-state actors possessed of a specific agenda and ideological orientation have created a challenging situation that is difficult to resolve and in which violence was and remains inevitable. The dissertation finds answers to why protests erupted in Syria and why protests shifted from nonviolence to violence. The central theme of the dissertation is to identify theoretical and practical inferences, while using a comparative framework and a case study of the complexity of the crisis in Syria – which serves as the focal point of the study. References to other cases are included as a foundation for a statistical assessment of the unique Syrian case. The dissertation supports the grievance, political opportunities and resource mobilization arguments to explain why citizens protested. Economic grievances in all the cases are rooted in corruption, income inequality, unemployment and the lack of opportunities. Political grievances connect people to exclusion from political power and a desire for democracy. To explain protests in the region, the dissertation draws on the literature of mobilization, revolution, repertoires of contention, social media, youth bulge, and unemployment and regime type to test two grievance based hypothesis and one violence based hypothesis. The dissertation concludes that protests in all cases are associated with socioeconomic and socio-political grievances. There is also evidence that the nature of violence is linked to the function of regime and security force type. Most significantly, the study reveals that in the case of Syria, an authoritarian, exclusivist regime created and maintains the environment in which opposition was inevitable and in which a violent response was predictable

ETD_8171

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Binneh S. Minteh

doi:10.7282/T3DB84S8

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.