This study uses public opinion survey data to clarify the political actors from whom Syrian people expect to receive support for rebuilding their country in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war. Currently, there are three dominant forces in Syria: the Assad regime, rebels, and Kurdish forces. Foreign powers such as Russia, Iran, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar support these forces. Normally, people expect support from the ruling forces under which they live, and the ruling forces respond to these expectations to increase their legitimacy and strengthen their control. This study seeks to analyze the extent to which Syrians expect the camp controlling their residential areas to rebuild their nation. Additionally, it seeks to identify the group upon which internally displaced persons and refugees, particularly those controlled by rebels, who are likely to be defeated in the Syrian civil war, pin their hopes for State reconstruction. The contributions of this study to the theory of comparative authoritarian regimes are as follows: It improves the understanding of the reality of the reconstruction process of authoritarian rule by analyzing people’s expectations from the ruler and their allies. Furthermore, it exposes the subjectivity of political attitudes held by the ruled class by analyzing the fragmented State of Syria and corrects the misunderstanding that people subjected to authoritarian rule demonstrate apathy. The study used poll data from Syria in 2020 to analyze the Syrian public’s perception of the current situation and their attitudes toward the forces that they expect would support them.

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Scholars often appear obsessed with finding development “models” – that is, universal and transposable strategic and policy formulations for the management and enhancement of socioeconomic conditions and the business-government dynamic – and in modern times a variety of such models have been proposed for the Middle East, from state-led to market-led ones, and from imported ones such as the “Washington consensus” and a “Beijing consensus” to indigenous ones such as a “Dubai model.” But what is the exact history and trajectory of this search, and is it an appropriate approach? Does the Middle Eastern development experience suggest that such models can be identified and widely applied? Or are models really just attempts at creating frameworks, or even just checklists, based on a conglomeration of generic policies? This paper engages with these questions. It does this by examining some of the earlier development approaches of the region and their flaws, and then moves on to look at whether newer models proposed for the region, from the Beijing consensus to a Dubai or Qatar model, contain potential. The paper concludes from this that development “models” have proven weak and flawed when applied to the Middle East, and are an insufficient basis for understanding – much less predicting – the trajectories of the region’s political economies.

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