Why is Syria so Statist? Revisiting Ideas and Economic Change in Historical Institutionalism

Speaker: Daniel Neep, Georgetown University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Why did Syria transition from a laissez-faire to a statist economy between 1946 and 1954? Existing scholarship proposes a political or class-based explanation: the anti-colonial old bourgeoisie that inherited power after independence was so discredited by its record of economic mismanagement, cronyism, and defeat in the 1948 war that army officers felt obliged to intervene. Daniel Neep presents his paper explaining the shift by using a constructivist historical institutionalist approach to emphasise the importance of ideas in producing economic shifts. Recorded on 29 October 2015.