We are pleased to announce our new publication “From Federalism to Hyper-centralisation: The History of Decentralisation in the Syrian Constitutions” by Dr Dr Zedoun Al Zoubi, Dr Rim Turkmani and  Mazen Gharibah. The paper is now available in Arabic. The English version will be available soon. Until then we publish below English the abstract of the paper.

 The paper will be launched in two events. The first one is in Arabic on 17^th of May (registered here) and the second one is hybrid event in English on 20 May (register here).

Abstract.

 Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, decentralisation has become a central point in both the attempts of authorities to absorb the protests, on the one hand, and the proposals of all the opposition’s forms on the other. Thus, seeking to placate street protests, the authorities issued several laws, one of which was Legislative Decree No. 107 of the Local Administration Law on August 23, 2011, about five months after the outbreak of the uprising. The opposition included the clause of expanded administrative decentralisation in almost all its statements, while this clause constituted a central point in most Kurdish force’s documents, sometimes under the clause of democratic decentralisation and sometimes under the clause of federalism. Decentralisation is also considered an essential dimension of peace processes in countries experiencing a civil war or local conflict to resolve issues of power sharing, democratisation, and problems related to identity conflict. The limitations of existing research studies related to this issue begin with the fact that such research is scant and restricted to some evaluations of a few local experiences in areas controlled by the opposition and areas under the control of the Autonomous Administration, in addition to general evaluations of the local administration in areas under the control of the Syrian regime.

In this study, we seek to present a research paper series on the issue of decentralisation based on our study of the evolution of decentralisation constitutionally and legally through the major constitutions that affected the country from the date of the first draft constitution in 1920 until the constitution of 2012, giving our extended attention to the draft constitution of 1920, and the constitutions of 1930 (including the draft constitution of 1928), 1950, 1973, and 2012. We focus on these constitutions for their symbolic value and/or their impact on the country. The draft constitution of 1920 was the first constitution for the independent Syria after its separation from the Ottoman Sultanate, and the draft constitution of 1928 was the first constitution drawn up by Syrians during the Mandate era. The Constitution of 1930, which was an amended version of its predecessor, continued until 1950, which was the date of the first Syrian constitution after independence from France. The Constitutions of 1973 and 2012 have been the most influential ones in Syrians’ lives today; the former had a 39-year career, and the latter constitution is still in force up to the date of this study.

Our study focuses on investigating texts related to decentralisation according to its three dimensions: political, administrative, and fiscal, starting with specific definitions of these dimensions and investigating the reasons that prompted the writing of a new constitution. We distinguish, of course, between political decentralisation and federalism, considering that political decentralisation results from the achievement of local representation, while federalism requires, in addition to that, arrangements at the level of centralisation, including the establishment of a second chamber in the parliament to represent regions, as it was the case in the draft constitution of 1920. Furthermore, we attempt to understand the constitutional relation between minority rights, elections, and decentralisation.

After an analytical and descriptive study of the constitutions, we have come to several conclusions, the most important of which is the profound impact of external factors on the selected texts. The constitution of 1920 was intended to establish a federation that would enjoy political and administrative decentralisation as a reaction to the intense centralisation of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) at the end of the Ottoman Sultanate’s era. However, the constitution of 1930 was centralised in response to the hyper-federalisation policies of the French Mandate authorities. The constitution of 1950 also came with advanced texts of decentralisation without naming it, fearing once again the consequences of the French model.

The second factor that influenced the selected texts on decentralisation is the internal factor, especially the relationship between the major and smaller governorates on the one hand, and the relationship between the centre and the subordinate ends, on the other. The complex post-independence relationship between Damascus and Aleppo after the dominance of the Aleppo National Bloc (People’s Party) over the Constituent Assembly greatly affected the adoption of decentralisation texts to liberate Aleppo and the rest of governorates from the domination of the capital city. The Constitutions of 1973 and 2012 adopted highly centralised texts despite the use of advanced terms to tighten the authority of the Ba’ath Party and other authoritarian powers over the country, which confirms the fear of decentralisation by authoritarian powers which consider it as one of the tools of democratisation that they normally fear.

Finally, the disparity between constitutions regarding dealing with minorities is markedly obvious between the clear recognition of minorities in most constitutions and the disregard for ethnic minorities, with a slight exception in the constitution of 2012, noting that the two constitutions that linked decentralisation and minority rights were both the draft constitution of 1920 (in allocating seats for minorities in the Syrian National Congress and in the province’s Chamber of Deputies) and the constitution of 1930 (talking about local languages). What is remarkable about this constitution is that the representatives of the Sanjak of Alexandretta were calling for asymmetrical decentralisation to deal with the local specificity of this area. However, most of the commission rejected this, which may have had an impact on the option of staying with Syria or secession from it and the annexation to Turkey. To conclude, this research is the first one, and we hope to strengthen it with a series of research papers that examine the reality of decentralisation today, its prospects in the future, and its position in the final Syrian solution.