Governance from Below

A rare insight into functionality of local councils and their importance for governance of insurgent-controlled parts of Syria is now…

A rare insight into functionality of local councils and their importance for governance of insurgent-controlled parts of Syria is now available as ‘Governance from Below ’.

Here just two excerpts:

As civilian-led structures opposed to the regime, the councils operate like “small governments” in managing the affairs of their regions.26 Facing arbitrary violence by armed militias, increasing lawlessness and spikes in criminality, activists have generally strived to maintain councils’ autonomy from rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army, whose priorities sometimes clashed with those of LACs’ leaders. Indeed, the trajectory of the councils’ development has been influenced, overall, not just by the intensity of confrontations, or the degree of accommodation with the regime, or by fluctuations in donor priorities, but also by competition from militias.

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Councils have predominantly assumed coordination of civil defense, education, health, and development projects, in addition to the extension of resource-intensive services like water, electricity and waste collection. To a lesser extent, they have also been directly involved in restoring infrastructure, as well as extending relief to the local communities, which are areas where nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and charity organizations became dominant players. According to participants in the study, LACs made themselves particularly felt in the education sector as they operated schools and amended curricula by removing Ba’athist ideology and references to the Assad regime. They struggled to protect civic and secular values in the curricula, however. In the face of pressures from militias and some donors, they also incorporated Islamist ideology.