Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Politics of Syria
Summary
Politics in the Syrian Arab Republic takes place in the framework of a presidential republic with nominal multi-party representation in People's Council under the Ba'athist-dominated National Progressive Front. In practice, Syria is a one-party state where independent parties are outlawed; with a powerful secret police that cracks down on dissidents. Since the 1963 seizure of power by its Military Committee, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party has governed Syria as a totalitarian police state. After a period of intra-party strife, Hafez al-Assad gained control of the party following the 1970 coup d'état and his family has dominated the country's politics ever since.
Until the early stages of the Syrian uprising, the president had broad and unchecked decree authority under a long-standing state of emergency. The end of this emergency was a key demand of the uprising. Superficial reforms in 2011 made presidential decrees subject to approval by the People's Council, the country's legislature, which is itself dominated to parties loyal to the president. The Ba'ath Party is Syria's ruling party and the previous Syrian constitution of 1973 stated that "the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party leads society and the state." At least 183 seats of the 250-member parliament are currently reserved for the National Progressive Front, a Ba'ath Party dominated coalition that consists of nine other satellite parties loyal to Ba'athist rule. The rest of the seats are occupied by independents, who are nominated by the Ba'ath party.
The Syrian Army and security services maintained a considerable presence in the neighbouring Lebanese Republic from 1975 until 24 April 2005. 50th edition of Freedom in the World, the annual report published by Freedom House since 1973, designates Syria as "Worst of the Worst" among the "Not Free" countries, listing Assad government as one of the two regimes to get the lowest possible score (1/100).
Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970. After his death in 2000 his son, Bashar al-Assad, succeeded him as president.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.