The pre-reform regime prompted a series of questions on the efficiency and transparency of the system [14], mainly questions connected with information asymmetry.
"The slogans of the protesters will change from 'The people want to reform the regime' to 'The people want the fall of the regime,' " said Ammar Qurabi, chairman of the Syrian National Association for Human Rights, who was in Egypt at a conference.
Members of the government fear the real agenda of the Sunni is not reform but regime change, a counter-revolution reversing the post-Saddam Hussein political settlement.
On Friday, protesters were chanting the slogan "The people want to reform the regime," a more moderate version of one that has resounded in recent upheavals across the region saying the "people want to bring down the regime".
As Peter Harling and Sarah Birke, experts on the Middle East who have been in Syria, wrote in a recent essay: "Rather than reform, the regime's default setting has been to push society to the brink.
AFTER four months of popular demonstrations and ferocious repression, including a bloody crackdown on the central city of Hama on Sunday, the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, still refuses to step down, insisting that he can reform his regime.
My short answer is this: There are many good reasons for the U.S. to promote reform or regime change in Syria, but we have no legal basis to do it now by military means and are not likely to try.
King Abdullah of Jordan has managed to dampen down protests demanding reform and regime change as the Arab Spring revolts have erupted in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and across North Africa.
The implosion of the Soviet Empire about half a century later, on the heels of Gorbachev's failure to balance systemic reform with regime preservation, seemingly reinforced Churchill's famous dictum, paving the way for Francis Fukuyama to triumphantly declare "the end of history".
Myanmar has an obligation to reform its regime such that it is better able to meet the (health) needs of its ethnic minorities.
