Sustaining a regime-centric Syrian state: Education ‘service wars’, political legitimacy, and state maintenance in the Syria Conflict, 2011-2016

• In Event: Remapping State/Education Relations in the Context of North-South Epistemologies

Proposal

After more than six years of unrelenting conflict, Bashar al-Assad’s position in Syria is growing stronger, with the possibility of regime change looking increasingly unlikely. While Assad and his allies have relied heavily on violence and mass destruction to undermine threats to their authority, the use of violence is insufficient for explaining the regime’s ability to maintain control over the state. Here, analysts of the Syria case also emphasize service delivery as a critical arena in which contests for power are being fought and won (Ciro Marintez and Eng 2017, Khaddour 2015, Heller 2016). To this end, I examine the unique terms of ‘service wars’ in Syria’s education space, arguing that government education provision has functioned as a mechanism for generating obedience and acquiescence towards the regime from students, families and even rebel groups. In contra-distinction to those scholars who hold that authoritarian regimes neither need nor aim to cultivate legitimacy, I argue that educational analysis elucidates the ways in which the Syrian regime wields legitimate forms of power despite being a deeply illegitimate political entity itself.

Author

• Garrett Rubin, University of Cambridge