Rebuilding the State in Post-Assad Syria

Abstract: Voices in the international community express concerns over the need to protect minority rights in post-Assad Syria. Confessional quotas, ethnosectarian power sharing, and confederal devolution have all been proposed as potential safeguards for liberal freedoms. Syrian responses to these proposals are nevertheless shaped by the country's prior experience of the problems caused by the architectures of both identity-based politics and laissez-faire liberalism. The prospects for democratization after Assad will reflect the long-term trajectory of state-building in Syria, not solutions from outside.