Reply to ‘Building authoritarian “legitimacy”: domestic compliance and international standing of Bashar al-Asad’s Syria’ by Aurora Sottimano

Introduction

“…Sottimano argues that the very notion of legitimacy within this context 'is misleading because it downplays those power practices of discipline and normalisation which shore up the Syrian authoritarian regime and enforce compliance and acquiescence.' Mathieu Rey (2016) agrees with this analysis, and he enriches the study of the Syrian crisis, situating it in a broader historical and regional perspective, where the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a turning point. Both Sottimano and Rey emphasise that the category of sectarianism is misleading and does not shed light on the Syrian case.…”