Syria the Strength of an Idea: The Constitutional Architectures of its Political Regimes

The Center for Arab Unity Studies published the book Syria the Strength of an Idea: The Constitutional Architectures of its Political Regimes, by Dr. Karim Atassi.

Syria, an idea that gained its strength from that history full of successive civilizations since thousands of years ago, and from that pivotal geography in which trade routes, civilizational friction and the convergence of continents intertwine, as well as foreign ambitions that expressed themselves through colonial projects and aggressive actions against it. Thus, the history was combined with geography to generate experiences and the collective memories, all of which established a national project and an identity that tends to liberation and independence and to build a national state, soon reinforced this identity and the national project through a long period of political activism, conflict, and steadfastness in the face of external threats, which in turn increased the strength of this idea.

And if the constitution in any country represents – in addition to being a set of rules regulating the separation of powers and governance and the form and role of the state – the most expressive document of the country’s identity and its national project, and the choices of the state that express the will of its citizens in their various categories. Hence this book, which provides a political historical reading of the Syrian constitutions over a century of the experience of the Syrian national state. At the same time, it provides a history of the political developments and struggles and the major events that Syria has known, and had a role in modernizing the Syrian national project over the last century while preserving the basic constants, which is an update that was clearly reflected in the constitutions that accompanied those transformations. The book follows the development of the components of the Syrian national project since the separation from the Ottoman Empire until today, and how this project was expressed in the successive political systems that governed Syria, and in the constitutions that these systems set for its rule, and in the constitutional architectures of those systems, such as electoral laws and party laws. The book sheds light on the Damascus Program of 1919 as a text that contains the basic components of the Syrian national project, passing through the first constitution drawn up for the Arab Kingdom of Syria, and then the republican constitutions established for the Syrian state since 1928, up to the last constitution the country of 2012, and the constitutional projects that followed  but did not find their way to approval. The book delves into the various pivotal political stations that Syria has known, to the civil war of regional and international dimensions that has been raging on its land since 2011 until today, summarizing the proposals put forward for the country’s exit from this crisis through a new constitution, stressing the importance of strengthening and modernizing the Syrian national project based on Of the constants set by the founding fathers of the Syrian state.