The pre-Baath era in Syria is generally acknowledged by most people as the "golden era" of Syrian democracy.
Even radical Baathists who refused to admit that in the past now nod affirmatively when such a bold statement is made, acknowledging that when operating through a real democracy, the Baathists won an overwhelming number of seats in the parliamentary elections of 1954.
That period roughly lasted from the birth of the republic in 1932 until rise of the Baathists in 1963. The socialists, officers and politicians of the post-1963 order often accused this period of having been elitist, feudal and unjust, concentrated in the hands of the urban notability, claiming that it was a dictatorship of the elite, representing urban Syria with no regard for its rural population, rather than a true democracy...