Syria and the Lebanese Crisis is concerned with the analysis of Syria's decision-making behaviour during the crisis precipitated by the Lebanese civil war. In this book, the author identifies the relevant and influential Syrian decision-makers and ascertains their institutional affiliations, i.e. whether they emanate from the military establishment, the Baath party organisation, the bureaucracy, or the security and intelligence services. The author also analyses the values, images and perceptions of the decision-making group in order to discover the motivations for, and the reasons behind, Syria's behaviour during the Lebanese civil war. Finally, he traces the process by which the consequential Syrian decisions were taken during the entire span of the crisis. The analysis here is not only descriptive, but it is also explanatory in its concentration on the dynamic interaction between, on the one hand, actual political and military developments in Lebanon and the contiguous area and, on the other hand, changing levels of threat perceptions by the Syrian decision-makers.

Based on wide-ranging research on a variety of primary sources and extensive official and non-official interviews conducted in Damascus, this book uses the Lebanese civil war as a case study in order to delve into the composition, power structure and performance of Syria's foreign policy decision-making. Indeed, with an additional detailed analysis of Syria's political system in general, Syria and the Lebanese Crisis is by far the most penetrating and revealing account to date of Syrian politics under the presidency of Hafiz al-Asad.

Dr Adeed I. Dawisha is Assistant Director of Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He has previously taught international relations and Middle Eastern politics at the Universities of Lancaster, Keele, Sussex and British Columbia, and was formerly Senior Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Dr Dawisha's many articles have appeared in various scholarly journals, including Foreign Policy, Orbis, Middle East Journal, Governmem and Opposition and Political Studies. He is also the author of Egypt in the Arab World and Saudi Arabia's Search for Security.

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