Economic Policy and Class Structure in Syria: 1958–1980
It is indeed an interesting endeavor to investigate the impact of economic policies on social stratification. Doing so enables us to see to what extent economic policies bring changes in class structure in a society. We take the case of Syria to study its economic policies and their accompanying impact on the evolving pattern of the Syrian elite from the late 1950s to the early 1980s and then look at accompanying impact on class structure. The two poles or aspects of this paper are (1) economic policies themselves and (2) their impact on class structure. The question that we are going to raise in the first pole is the following: what is the nature of the economic policies? This refers to land reforms, industrial and commercial reforms, and foreign trade controls.
The uprising of the marginalised: a socio-economic perspective of the Syrian uprising
More than three years after the outbreak of protests in a number of Arab countries, the role of socio-economic factors in these events is attracting more attention. One of the cases that needs more research is Syria. More than three years into the Syrian uprising, the socio-economic roots of the protest movement that became one of the bloodiest civil conflicts in the history of the Middle East need to be examined. While it has been observed that the Syrian uprising, contrary to some ‘Arab Spring’ countries, has been an uprising of more marginalised social groups with a strong role played by poorer segments in the society, particularly rural and rural-to-urban migrants, the socio-economic explanation for this is still underdeveloped. This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of this issue by examining the political and socio-economic compromise that underlined the rule of the Ba’th party in Syria for four decades and unpacking how a combination of internal and external shifts that started in the 1990s and intensified in the 2000s led to the erosion of this compromise, providing the background to the events that began in 2011.
The Problems and Opportunities in Developing International Business Programs
This paper discusses the results of a survey conducted among AACSB member schools. The survey dealt with two major topical areas. These were (a) what types of International Business programs currently exist in AACSB Schools, and (b) problems associated with these programs. The paper also suggests countries that offer opportunities to Colleges of Business to pursue countty-specific programs.