From the social market economy to the national partnership: the conflict elite and public-private partnerships in a post-war Syria

The current state of the Syrian conflict has turned our collective attention to questions of reconstruction, despite the absence of a formalised peace process or political negotiations. The Syrian post-war order is not being shaped by a liberal peace imposed from the outside by multilateral powers, nor a negotiated peace that emerged from within the country through negotiations between various factions. Instead, what is emerging in Syria – drawing from the work of David Lewis – is an ‘authoritarian peace’ in which perpetual violence, the persistence of enmity, and forms of social and political erasure underpin the post-war order. It is through this interpretative framework and its materialisation on the ground that I believe we need to think about Syria’s current and future political economy.