William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
Abstract
This Note will be examining the way in which this social contract, the “Social Contract of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria,” and the social order it proposes, “Democratic Confederalism,” represents a significant departure from the constitutional order of ethnic nation-states that arose in the postcolonial, and particularly the post-Ottoman, Middle East.
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This Note then contrasts the “Social Contract of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria” with the Syrian constitutions, first the 1973 Constitution that had been in effect until the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, followed by a brief look at the changes represented by the 2012 revision. It also examines differences in treatment of nationality in those documents, with a focus on how the Democratic Confederalist Social Contracts differ. This Note then addresses a brief survey of criticisms of this post-nationalist social order in North and East Syria, and the ways in which the lived reality of the folks living in this region do not match with the rhetoric of these founding documents.
This abstract has been taken from the author's introduction.