STATELESS DEMOCRACY? THE CASE OF NORTH-EAST SYRIA A qualitative study on bottom-up democratization and decentralized governance

Abstract

This bachelor’s thesis evaluates the decentralized governance model of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) in its ability to handle political collective action problems. The AANES represents an experiment in the creation of a stateless democracy that challenges more traditional theories of top-down democratization and state building. By focusing on the institutional design of the AANES through its social contract, the thesis investigates how it is able to handle political collective action in matters of coordination, participation and conflict resolution.

The study conducts a qualitative text analysis adapting Elinor Ostrom’s principles for collective action in decentralized polities, evaluating the effectiveness of the AANES decentralized institutions. The results show that the AANES has developed effective ways for facilitating inclusive participation, ensuring jurisdictional boundaries, issuing justice and managing multi-level coordination in its institutions. The balance of local autonomy and centralized governance in the direction of centralization is one way this is inhibited, however. As such, the analysis contributes to the broader discussion on democratization in post-conflict societies. The AANES thus provides insight into alternative ways for democratic development that goes beyond the state-centric model that has had a large influence on the region at large and beyond.