TITLE:
Political Theory of Societal Association: Case of the Failed State of Syria—Part 2
AUTHORS:
Frederick Betz
KEYWORDS:
Civilization, Failed States, Political Theory, Middle East, Colonialism
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.8 No.6,
June
30,
2020
ABSTRACT: This is the second paper
(of four) analyzing the failure of the Syrian state. Four papers have been
required because of the complicated sequence of events in the history of Syria:
1) from territory from the Ottoman Empire to European colonial states, 2) to
independent states, 3) to a near collapse under a terrorist caliphate, and 4)
to refugee impacts on its former colonial occupiers. In this historical
sequence, we are testing the validity of the modern theory of political
association. In the previous paper of Part 1, we constructed this formal theory
as a 3-D taxonomy of political association, which we used to analyze why the
state of Syria failed in a vicious civil war (Betz, 2019). The history of modern
Syria began at the end of the Ottoman Empire, from which the modern Middle East
states were carved. Because of the complex details of the government of Syria
after independence, we here review these events as a second paper, Part 2. This
paper continues using the methodology of grounding social science theory upon
historical studies.