What makes ‘the people’ an authority is not when a populations’ votes are tallied up, but when they become something on behalf of which armies can be raised, mobilized, and materially sustained (by populations, being fed and quartered, etc.).
The foundation of popular sovereignty is not electoralism, but the ability for a state to facilitate and realize the social contract: An extent to which the impersonal reality of state power recognizes and is recognized by people.
It is true that anyone can falsely claim that their actions are being done in the name of the people. But for it to be proven, ‘the people’ actually have to materially tip the scales to your advantage over your enemies in war.
A true authority rises to power on the basis of recognition by the popular national subject (the people) - rather than tribes, oligarchies and cliques. This recognition is not proven by elections - but by war, and by its ability to respond to their existence, and by the ability for that response to somehow itself be communicated to individuals.
The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Communists did not need elections to prove their popularity. The fact that nearly all the Russian peasantry went over to their side from the strategic standpoint of a civil war, proved it in actual material reality rather than institutionally.
Without the Arab street, the fellaheen and the popular masses, there would never have been Ba’athist states nor Nasserism. Somehow, this fact got lost on all the discourse surrounding the ‘Arab spring’ in 2011. The liberal view was taken for granted over the socialist view regarding democracy and popular legitimation.
Obviously in their later years, Arab nationalist regimes like Bashar’s were deeply unpopular and so were other nationalist leaders. But is that because they were tyrants, or because they were weak? Think about it.
Was Hosni Mubarak a strong man? What was so strong about him? Who was stronger, Nasser or Anwar Sadat? Now ask - who was more popular? Who was more popular, Bashar or his father?
Arab nationalist modernism wasn’t perfect but that doesn’t mean it accomplished nothing. And while the Six Day war is remembered as having discredited the project, people forget just how close the then matured regimes got to defeating Israel in 73.
I believe Syrians, like today's Iraqis, will miss the cruelty of the regime most of all. They will see it for the impersonal and blind justice that it was, trying its best to keep everyone in line for the sake of the country's independence and sovereignty.
Ba'athism/Nasserism wasn't perfect. But it built military modernization, central state authority, modern infrastructure, and sovereign command economies.
Syrians should know if Syria is going to survive, it will have to build off the foundations that have been thus far developed.
Turkey will never accept Arabs as their brothers. Turkey has its own modern national state tradition in Kemalism.
I am far from saying it is impossible to achieve greater justice for the Syrian people than what existed before. Syrians are going to realize just how ‘Syrian’ they were - rather than how Sunni, Shia, Christian, Alawite, and Kurdish - when they face the reality that Turkey has no intention of integrating them as equals.
I am saying that liberal illusions must be cast aside and that a new, strong and tough state authority will still need to be built - it is a fundamental part of the infrastructure of modern civilizations.
Many Shias in Iraq today miss Saddams rule. And that is not because they personally forgive Saddam, it's because they understand that dismantling and destroying the sovereign state infrastructure of the Iraqi state was a huge mistake.
And that their grievances with Saddam did not justify that. The same is true for Syria.
The region as a whole must rediscover a form of regime politics far stronger than Ba'athism and Arab nationalism.
