The remarkable yet tragic victory of the Syrian revolution, following a brutal fifteen-year struggle, marked by hundreds of thousands of deaths and the displacement of millions, finally reached its turning point on December 7, 2024. Unlike the multiple coups of the 1950s and 1960s, where new rulers immediately sought to establish their legal status, the current de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has declared a five-year transitional period, for which he has issued a temporary Constitutional Declaration. Although the Constitutional Declaration formally guarantees equality, it omits even minimal democratic safeguards and offers no meaningful assurance of separation of powers or checks and balances. It thereby reinforces authoritarian power and individual rule. Instead, the principles that fuelled the revolution – freedom and democracy – are entirely absent. As such, the current Constitutional Declaration cannot be considered a true constitution of the Syrian people.

The newly formed victorious authority remained absent from the public sphere for fifty days following the regime’s defeat – a symbolic gesture marking fifty years of repression. When it finally emerged, it did so without presenting any foundational constitutional declaration. The so-called Victorious Congress was, in essence, nothing more than a ceremonial event to appoint a state president – an individual who had already been exercising de facto constitutional authority absent any formal, minimalist constitutional declaration or even basic constitutional principles. Under the mandate of the Victorious Congress – but without a previously established constitutional framework – the newly appointed President then signed the temporary Constitutional Declaration, intended to govern Syria throughout the next five-year transitional period.

An ambivalent document

This Constitutional Declaration is an ambivalent document. Some of its developments are – at least on paper – explicitly progressive. For example, the Constitutional Declaration enshrines equal citizenship rights, with Article 10 explicitly prohibiting discrimination based on race, religion, gender, or affiliation. Article 21 extends additional protections for women’s status in society, reinforcing their role in the family, access to education, and equal employment opportunities – marking a substantive step of progress in comparison to previous constitutional frameworks.

Other provisions represent more subtle but nonetheless noteworthy changes. For example, Article 3.1 reaffirms that “Islamic jurisprudence is the main source of legislation” (Art. 3.2). This marks a significant change in nuance compared to Article 3.2 of the 2012 Constitution, which defined Islamic jurisprudence merely as “a principal source”. The revised formulation emphasises the centrality of Islamic jurisprudence in the legal system, though this semantic shift is also not entirely unprecedented. It first appeared in the 1953 Constitution, was omitted in the Constitutions of 1958 and 1961, only to be reinforced by the 1962 Constitution and preserved in the temporary Constitutions of 1969 and 1971. Secondly, although the Constitutional Declaration does not explicitly abolish compulsory military service, it repeatedly associates the term “national army” with the principle of “professionalism” (Art. 9.1, 48.8). This wording suggests a subtle departure from the decades-long practice that epitomised the former regime’s authoritarian grip on military conscription.

Yet other provisions troubling echo Syria’s prior constitutional structures. Most importantly, the state structure outlined in the new text largely replicates the centralised presidential system of its predecessors. This excessive concentration of power in the hands of the President is a critical drawback of the Constitutional Declaration, reinforcing patterns of authoritarian governance from the past.

A judiciary between ambiguity, dependence and isolation

While the Declaration pays lip service to the separation of powers (Art. 2), this commitment is undermined from the outset by the executive’s sweeping authority over the judiciary. The Constitutional Court alone is fully appointed by the President without any form of parliamentary oversight or participation. This raises serious questions about its capacity to function as an effective counterbalance to the President’s extensive powers. The Constitutional Declaration also fails to specify the Court’s competencies or its role within the transitional framework, leaving its function ambiguous and potentially subject to political manipulation.

The consequences of such institutional ambiguity concerning the judiciary have become particularly evident in the creation of the newly erected Transitional Justice Committee (Article 49). On May 17th, the Syrian presidency issued a presidential decree – announced via its official Twitter account – establishing the Committee and appointing its chair. While citing the Constitutional Declaration as its legal basis, the decree grants the chair broad authority to form a working group and draft the Committee’s internal statute within 30 days. It then vaguely instructs the Committee to act “in coordination with the concerned entities” to uncover the truth about, prosecute those responsible for, and provide restitution for victims of the prior regime. Yet Article 49 of the Declaration does not explicitly anticipate such prosecutorial or quasi-judicial functions; it envisions the Committee primarily as a consultative platform generating ideas on transitional justice. The decree thus appears to exceed the Declaration’s original intent, creating uncertain lines of authority – particularly regarding whether the Committee will operate under or alongside the public prosecutor, the judiciary, or as an independent body with autonomous investigative and direct judicial powers.

Besides this, the Constitutional Declaration preserves the status quo of the administrative justice system by maintaining its institutional isolation (Art. 45.3). It thereby reinforces a highly centralised model of governance reminiscent of Syria’s earlier constitutional structures: Under previous regimes in Syria, administrative justice was largely exercised through internal administrative oversight mechanisms controlled by the ruling Ba’ath party. Administrative review was conducted within the bureaucracy itself, limited in scope to internal personnel disputes and select administrative contracts, and handled by administrative agents rather than independent, professional judges. The Constitutional Declaration reaffirms this structure by explicitly preserving the existing framework. By excluding administrative justice from such judicial integration, the Declaration effectively forecloses any immediate prospects for democratising administrative judicial review. This perpetuates a system of centralised, unipersonal administrative governance devoid of meaningful separation of powers and checks and balances.

Self-referential presidential authority

The President’s excessive power also reaches deeply into Parliament. He has the sole discretion to appoint one-third of the National Assembly, while the remaining two-thirds are selected by a Commission that he himself designates. The text also fails to specify the total number of parliamentary seats, leaving a critical ambiguity in legislative representation. This circular and opaque mechanism ensures presidential control over the entire legislature. Indeed, the absence of even minimalist elections erodes any pretense of representative democracy. Beyond this, the Declaration also provides no alternative, meaningful mechanisms ensuring presidential accountability – there are no provisions for impeachment, or a framework of succession beyond internal appointment. Instead, Article 34 grants the President exclusive authority to appoint, dismiss, or accept the resignation of Vice Presidents. In the event of a presidential vacancy, the first Vice President simply assumes power, entirely bypassing parliamentary oversight.

Article 33 further reinforces the president’s power over parliament: After the President has appointed the members of parliament, he proceeds to take his oath before the very body he created. At the same time, Article 27 mandates that parliament members swear their oath not before the parliamentary speaker, but directly before the President who appointed them. These norms of institutional design risk entrenching a system of self-referential authority and executive dominance, replicating the authoritarian dynamics of the previous regime.

Bypassing parliament

Lastly, the President’s bypassing of parliament extends even beyond formal matters institutional design. It also reaches into critical matters of state sovereignty – most notably, the authority to declare war. Article 41 grants the President the unilateral power to initiate war, subject only to the approval of the National Security Council. This Council is composed almost entirely of figures directly appointed by or closely aligned with the President, including the ministers of defence, foreign affairs, and interior, the intelligence chief, and two additional presidential advisors. Traditionally, the power to declare war is a core constitutional function of parliament, intended as a democratic check on executive militarism. By circumventing parliamentary involvement entirely, the Declaration not only consolidates power in the executive but also strips Parliament of any meaningful role. What ultimately remains is a body reduced to institutional aesthetics – its presence serves more to simulate the appearance of democratic process than to enact it.

In addition to declaring war, the President may also impose martial law across the country – fully or partially – for a three-month period without any initial parliamentary involvement. Consultation is required only with the President of Parliament and the President of the Constitutional Court, but neither holds veto power. Parliamentary approval is only required for renewals beyond three months, leaving significant executive leeway to suppress civil liberties during this transitional period.

Finally, Article 50 grants the President the exclusive power to propose constitutional amendments, requiring two-thirds approval from the parliament. However, given that the parliament itself is presidentially appointed, this provision effectively eliminates any independent amendment process, further consolidating executive authority.

Reconfiguring authoritarianism

So, instead of laying the foundation for a new political order based on inclusion, participation, and institutional balance, the Constitutional Declarations reinforces the same patterns of power personalization and lack of separation of powers and checks and balances that characterised the previous regime. In fact, rather than a democratic transition, it appears to be a reconfiguration of authoritarianism under a new nomenclature of constitutional aestheticism. Indeed, the most accurate adjective to describe the new governance structure in Syria is that of a de facto regime, now coupled with the category of de facto constitutionalism. While de facto states typically emerge from prolonged popular struggles, this case presents an unusual paradox: a popular victory over a repressive government that – instead of translating into a new constitutional legitimacy – is being managed with deliberate legal ambiguity.

One might argue that the extraordinary concentration of presidential power is a necessary measure in the fragile context of post-conflict state-building – that strong, centralised authority is needed to maintain cohesion, ensure security, and resist fragmentation. But this claim is deeply problematic in itself. First, it assumes that authoritarian executive control is the only or best path to stability, a claim historically disproven in the Syrian context. Second, by excluding freedom, democracy, and even basic mechanisms of accountability from the constitutional framework, the Declaration risks reconstituting authoritarianism under a revolutionary guise. In doing so, it betrays the very principles – popular sovereignty, participatory governance, and constitutional legitimacy – that animated the revolution in the first place.

The key question, then, is whether this formal document will serve as the foundation for a new political order or simply represent another iteration of Syria’s entrenched authoritarian legacy. This transitional period can still lead to a more inclusive and democratic governance model in the end – or it may simply further consolidate centralised power in the hands of the executive. The answer depends not only on the internal dynamics of Syria’s political forces but also on the extent of interference and pressure exerted by civil society and the international community on the constitutional-building process in the coming years.