Per una geografia dell'etnonazionalismo. Alcuni processi territoriali nella Siria del Ba'th e di Hafiz al-Assad.

The coming to power of the left wing of the Ba'th party started a period of strong repressions against the moderate elements of the country and started the process of transformation,in a socialist path,of the Syrian economic system.The subsequent nationalizations and confiscations created the conditions for capital flight from Syria and a middle class brain drain. At the end of the nineties, the Syrian economy was still stagnant not because of the absence of potentially strong elements , but the use of these elements was inefficient, despite the creation of mixed companies and joint ventures also in the tourism sector. The relatively low value of manufacturing production was not a consequence of the reduced flow of investments to the sector , but the almost total absence of productivity growth. Syria ,which in 1950,for example,had been the second country in the region about export of agricultural products, starting in 1990 to base its exports almost entirely on fuel. The Syrian economy, based on a substantial wealth of arable land, labor and capital, must therefore has been among the strongest in the Mena area. But the scarce availability of production coefficients was the primary cause of its weakness. Capital had no structural power as its accumulation was not protected : by the nationalization of banks in 1960, the banking system had been reduced to a simple element of the State budget and transaction costs were extremely high and subject to control by the corrupt State élite.