This chapter sets out the book’s main theoretical claims. It argues that understanding the emergence of revolutionary challenge along ethnic lines requires a focus on local-level interactions between social actors and state agents and how they vary over time. This approach directs attention to variation within ethnic groups and, specifically, to linkages between sub-ethnic units and the state. The chapter then presents the book’s main theoretical intervention: state linkages often condition the participation of “ethnically excluded” populations, and incumbent response to challenge is often not focused singly on dividing the population on ethnic lines but includes important forms of conciliation aimed at preserving cross-ethnic clients. This conciliation often fails, however, because informal, ethnically dominated autocratic regimes resort to violence to deal with immediate threats posed by prolonged urban demonstrations and challenger violence, shattering many of the linkages forged across ethnic lines. This view of challenger–incumbent interaction under ethnically dominated rule challenges the dominant view that regimes intentionally polarize their polities on ethnic lines to cling to power; the patchwork of bargains such regimes strike with various elements of the populations they rule can channel contention toward ethnic violence, even when ethnicization is not in the incumbent’s interest.

This chapter sets the political and social context for the events of the 2011 Syrian uprising. It describes the topography of ethnic boundaries and, using original quantitative data, shows that ʿAlawis were disproportionate beneficiaries of state largesse, accessed through informal ties and formal positions in the civil service and military. Nonetheless, substantial segments of the Sunni Arab population were also tied to the state through personalistic ties and public institutions. Then it describes the relationship between ethnicity and state access in historical and theoretical terms, arguing that the Baʿth regime instrumentalized existing social structures in some cases, building ties to local leaders with customary status, and worked to break down these ties in other cases, building new ties with individual citizens through corporatist development and state employment. Finally, the chapter examines the effects of neoliberal policies, enacted after 2000, on these linkages. It argues that these policies exacerbated the suffering of many Syrians already lacking state access but left the cross-ethnic structure of state–society ties intact.