A city and country in tatters
The Beirut Blast of August 4, 2020
The explosion of 2.750 tons ammonium nitrate on the fourth of August 2020 in Beirut – killing over 200 and wounding almost 5000 people – has been the latest illustration of grave mismanagement by the Lebanese government (BBC 2020). Many Lebanese feel their government fails to protect them. In the last two years in particular, the Levantine state has descended into heavy crises – economically, politically and socially. Even before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the country had an unsustainable debt-to-GDP ratio of almost hundred-fifty percent, one of the highest in the world (CIA Factbook). The government’s central bank failed to maintain the peg of the Lebanese pound to the US dollar, resulting in a loss of currency value of over eighty percent. Such currency value loss in a country largely relying on imports is unsustainable. Severe inflation hit the already plagued Lebanese people hard: food prices have risen, the frequency of electricity black outs increased significantly and government more and more failed to provide basic services as health care, education, electricity, internet and water provision. The COVID-19 pandemic only worsened Lebanon’s state of affairs. Furthermore, the threat of conflict – with Lebanon’s status as proxy battleground in the Middle Eastern ‘cold war’ and its history of civil war – always looms large. How did the country long nicknamed ‘Switzerland of the Middle East’ end up here (Cleveland 2016: 316)?
The country’s governance constitutes a specific model, variously described as political sectarianism, sectarian power-sharing, confessional politics or consociational democracy. The idea behind all these concepts is the same: neutralizing and institutionalizing socio-cultural and religious cleavages – for Lebanon, that is, sectarian divisions – by allocating each group a proportional share of state power. Whereas this system brought Lebanon relative peace and stability between 1943 and 1975, I argue that this very same system of sectarian power-sharing lies at the root of many of the country’s contemporary problems and struggles: from poverty, inequality, corruption, failing service delivery and political deadlock to even such major disasters as the Beirut blast this summer.
Lebanon’s sectarian system of governance and its origins
Having formed a governorate of the Ottoman Empire since the early sixteenth century, Lebanon was de facto colonized by France in 1920 after the First World War (Cleveland 2016: 206-7). Even before French imperial rule, a government structure based on the separation and autonomy of different sects already was in place, most notably in the form of feudal patronage networks, which ‘influenced the birth of Lebanon’s modern political system’ (Hamzeh 2001: 170). This preliminary system of sectarian power-sharing was subsequently reinforced in the twentieth century, when France ruled a League of Nations mandate over Syria and Lebanon (Fakhoury 2014). The French decided to enlarge the territory of newly-created Greater Lebanon compared to its Ottoman predecessor, the governorate (mutasarrifiyyah) of Mount Lebanon. To this province, mainly inhabited by Maronite Christians, France added Tyre, Sidon, Tripoli and Beirut. Furthermore, the formerly Syrian Beqaa Valley, including Baalbek, now also formed part of Greater Lebanon. Though the Maronite Christians remained one of the larger communities, except for Beirut, the newly added territories were predominantly inhabited by Lebanese Muslims. This period in history ‘ensured the existence of a volatile political mix in which competition for power would be based on sectarian affiliations’ (Cleveland 2016: 214).
In these circumstances, then, this competition over not just Lebanon’s governing but its very soul was accommodated in the 1926 Constitution, establishing the fundament for future institutional consociation agreements. The Maronite Christians saw Lebanon as oriented to the West, France and Europe and with a distinct Christian character. Sunni Muslims, to the contrary, longed for unification with Syria and an Arab cultural identity for Lebanon. Confessional government was then identified as suitable interim measure, as Lebanon was no independent country yet. Seats in parliament were awarded on the basis of confessional affiliation, as established in the 1926 Constitution (Berkley Center 2015). Lebanon remained part of the French mandate, but this unicameral parliament – appointing the rather powerful position of President – at least allowed for some domestic politics and self-governance.
The key challenge was ‘the need to reconcile conflicting aspirations of the Christian and Muslim communities and persuade them to work together to construct a distinctly Lebanese polity’ (Cleveland 2016: 215). Key figures in the (temporary) settlement of this struggle were Maronite President Bishari al-Khuri and Sunni Prime-Minister Riyad al-Sulh (Seaver 2000: 254-5). Having achieved independence from the French in 1943, these two men crafted the National Pact (al-mithaq al-wathani), an oral agreement which ‘build[s] an overarching Lebanese national identity that would pacify both Muslims and Christians’, positioning Lebanon between West and East (Seaver 2000: 254). The precise allocation of parliamentary seats and governing positions, as stipulated in the constitution, was specified in this Pact. Reflecting the Maronites’ powerful position, as they were backed by patron France, seats in parliament were allocated to Christians and Muslims to a 6:5 ratio – decided on the basis of the 1932 Census, in which the Maronites formed fifty-four percent of the population, which had shrunk and would only decrease further afterwards (Salamey & Payne 2008: 454-5). Other key positions were similarly allocated on the basis of sectarian identity: the President was to be a Maronite, the Prime-Minister a Sunni and the Parliament’s Speaker a Shi’a Muslim. Lebanon’s institutionalized confessional system of sectarian power-sharing was born and installed as ‘the country’s governing mechanism’ (Salamey & Payne 2008: 453).
On this fragile basis, Lebanon performed well post-independence – resulting in its status as ‘Paris’ or ‘Switzerland’ of the Middle East. ‘For the next three decades, sectarianism was not a live issue in Lebanese politics’ (Hudson 1976: 114). This, however, drastically changed in the 1970s. As a consequence of two instances of sectarian violence, though with multiple underlying and long-simmering reasons (changing demographic configurations (rendering the National Pact unfair for Muslim groups), proximity to Israel and Syria and PLO presence), civil war broke out in 1975, in which Syria intervened a year later in 1976 and Israel in 1985(-2000) (Seaver 2000; Hudson 1976). During fifteen years of war, until 1990, over 100,000 Lebanese were killed and 900,000 displaced. After all parties involved realized the conflict would have la ghalib, la maghlub (‘no victor, no vanquished’), the fighting ceased with the 1989 Ta’if Agreement (Rosiny 2015: 490). This agreement had two outcomes, mostly concessions to deprived Muslim groups: one, parliamentary seats would now be allocated to a 1:1 ratio; and two, executive power was no longer located in the (Maronite) President, but in the Council of Ministers, though the presidency remained a powerful position (Krayem 1997). In 2005, to conclude, Sunni Prime-Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated, for which occupying Syria was blamed. After country-wide protests, known as the Cedar Revolution, the Syrian army moved out in 2005 (Geha 2019a). After this war, Lebanon remained highly unstable and volatile, but managed to avert a descent into new widespread civil war – despite the threat of a spill-over of Syria’s civil war.
The case for consociationalism, and why power-sharing is argued to be beneficial for Lebanon
With the Ta’if Agreement, the historically self-reinforcing cycle of institutionalizing identitarian (religious) divisions in Lebanese politics and government continued. First, the French wilfully inherited the fundaments of the sectarian Ottoman system and reinforced this by modifying Lebanon’s territory, thereby the composition of its ‘sectarian mosaic’ as well. The system under the French mandate was preliminarily laid down in the 1926 Constitution and empowered in the unwritten National Pact. This oral agreement was then officially codified in the written Ta’if Agreement. The sectarian character of Lebanon’s system of governance, in which power was shared along sectarian lines, therefore remained in place, but was adapted to the new demographic reality.
Not only high political positions such as the presidency and premiership and parliamentary seats were pre-allocated along confessional lines, the same goes for the highest positions in the state bureaucracy. Lebanon’s elections, furthermore, play a key role. Lebanese parliament (majlis al-nuwwab) is elected via majoritarian election districts, in which multiple seats are available and pre-assigned to the various sects: for example, ‘if a district has three Maronite seats and two Shi’a, then the three Maronite and two Shi’a candidates with the highest number of votes are elected’ (Bogaards 2019: 524). However, in order to (theoretically) have minimal inter-sectarian competition, representatives are elected through universal suffrage, meaning that cross-sectarian support is necessary for electoral success, unless a candidate’s district is predominantly inhabited by ‘co-sectarians’ (Baytiyeh 2019: 226). A clear consequence of this system is that ‘it provides electoral results structured exclusively along denominational lines’ (Calfat 2018: 278), which is perfectly logical given that this ensures the fixed sectarian division of parliamentary seats, as agreed in the National Pact and the Ta’if Agreement.
This complex of institutions and governmental customs fits Arend Lijphart’s conception of ‘consociational democracy’. This political theory has frequently been applied to so-called ‘deeply divided societies’ with clearly distinguishable ‘identitarian’ communities (with religious, cultural or ethnic cleavages), none of which forms a majority. It is, then, assumed that there is a great likelihood of conflict between those communities. Therefore, in order to avoid such inter-sectarian conflict, proponents of consociationalism argue, their respective rights and security should be guaranteed ‘by building communal representation into the structure of government itself’ (Hudson 1976: 111). Power is shared proportionally between these communities on the basis of the country’s demographic composition. In order to have an effective consociational system, Lijphart makes four prescriptions (Lijphart 1977). First, an elite grand coalition should represent the various communities in the executive branch of government: the fundamental principle of power-sharing (Dixon 2020). Second, the elite representatives of each of these communities should have mutual veto, in order to ‘allow communities to contest decisions opposed to their interests’ (Fakhoury 2019: 10). Third, proportionality should be the underlying principle for all governmental and political matters, such as the division of parliament and allocation of civil service positions, but also the distribution of public expenditure. Fourth, there should be segmental autonomy, which allows every community ‘to run its own internal affairs’ (Seaver 2000: 250).
Lebanon is ‘the example par excellence of a political system structured along explicitly sectarian lines’ (Cammett 2019). As power in Lebanon is shared between various religious sects, Lebanese consociationalism can be more accurately labelled as confessionalism (muhasah ta’ifiyya) (Calfat 2018: 270). Lebanon is ‘a multi-ethnic and pluri-religious society in which eleven officially recognised sects (Shia, Maronite, Druze, Sunni, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Alawite, Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, Evangelical Protestant and Jew) are represented in the government’s legislative and executive branches’ (Calfat 2018: 269-70). Lebanon’s confessional system largely fulfils Lijphart’s criteria for consociational democracy. It guarantees segmental autonomy for the various sects, e.g. regarding educational, cultural and judicial matters (Geha 2019a: 13). Though not all, the politically most relevant sects – the Sunni, Shi’a and Maronites – have a veto, ‘forming a kind of Triumvirate’ (Calfat 2018: 276), thereby fulfilling Lijphart’s criterion of mutual veto power. Furthermore, Lebanese government tends to be formed by a grand coalition and has recently been composed of many parties. Lastly, though elections occur via majoritarian districts and not proportional representation, Lijphart’s criterion of proportionality is still ‘non-traditionally’ met as it is internalized in the system ‘through the legislative pre-attribution of confessional seats’ (Calfat 2018: 276). Regarding Lijphart’s ‘favourable conditions’, one can observe that, apart from its civil war, Lebanon’s sectarian elites have always been aware that there generally are la ghalib, la maghlub in sectarian conflict – an attitude only reinforced by the horrendous Lebanese civil war. As the elite recognizes the perils of state breakdown, they are willing to engage in the consociational accommodation of perceived ‘deep-rooted’ sectarian tensions (Bahout 2016).
In its theoretical fundaments, consociationalism is intended to do exactly that: providing ‘peaceful coexistence’, maintaining the ‘sectarian balance’ and ‘preventing the domination of one sect over the others’ (Baytiyeh 2019: 229). For Lebanon, in particular, proponents of consociationalism put forth a number of arguments why consociationalism is the best system for Lebanon. First, it is asserted that Lebanon’s consociational institutions have produced sectarian stability: apart from the civil war, large-scale inter-sectarian conflicts have been avoided (Fakhoury 2019: 247). Lebanese consociational democracy enabled ‘religious coexistence unique in the Arab world’ (Rosiny 2015: 489). Second, consociational proponents claim that the practical application of their theory has ensured a survival of democracy in Lebanon. The confessional formula would be ‘good for civic peace and gradual democratic development’ (USIP 2006) and ‘accommodated pluralism as much as possible’ (Bahout 2016: 21). Though it may seem difficult to conclude that consociationalism ensured the survival of Lebanese democracy when the country faced civil war for fifteen years, a look at the dark fate of similarly diverse countries like Syria and Iraq – though much less egalitarian, i.e. with clearer majority communities – shows that Lebanon, indeed, is ‘one of the few examples of [relative] democratic stability in the Middle East’ (Calfat 2018: 270). Where Egypt had Mubarak, Libya had Gaddafi; where Iraq had Saddam Hussein and Syria still has Bashar al-Assad, Lebanon never witnessed a dictatorial regime comparable to any of these. Third and last, Lebanon showed resilience in the face of regional tensions. The country’s consociational system has been able, since the end of the civil war, to withstand enormous pressures that various regional developments exerted on Lebanon and its ‘mosaic’ of sects with differing allegiances: inter alia Syrian’s civil war (and the resulting refugee flows into Lebanon), the Middle Eastern ‘cold war’ between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the role of Lebanese Hezbollah therein (Geha 2019b).
The case against consociationalism, and the role of sectarian power-sharing in Lebanon’s problematic state of affairs today
The case for consociationalism is mostly made by referring to the perceived success of the model in providing Lebanon with relative stability, peace and democracy. In my view, however, the downsides of consociationalism are more significant. Indeed, they have rendered continuous consociational success impossible. Before discussing these harmful consequences, I first put forth a fundamental theoretical critique of the consociational model:
Consociational theory presents a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to the management of various, very differing conflicts. This implies that the conflicts sought to be settled and prevented by consociationalism all have the same origin. The theory is notably built upon the problematic, essentialist idea of clashing sects that apparently constitute fixed, ‘internally homogenous, externally bounded’ wholes (Brubaker 2002: 164): ‘This pessimistic, primordialist analysis has led consociationalists to see intensifying war as inevitable’ (Dixon 2020: 119). Conflict situations like Lebanon’s, according to consociationalists, would thus be primordial, deep-rooted and even ‘organic’. This portrayal confuses the fluid dynamics of identity and its construction processes with a primordial understanding of a group’s identity as naturally given, historically transmitted and ‘immutable’ (Calfat 2018: 284). The importance (Lebanese) people attach to identity or sectarianism today can be very sincere and sometimes even passionate but that does not render it ‘natural’: it is the consequence of a long (ongoing) history of construction and instrumentalization of identity. From the Ottomans to the imperial French to the post-war and contemporary Lebanese interested elites, all function(ed) as sectarian entrepreneurs who employ sectarian politics and discourse – either implicit or explicit, either conscious or unconscious – in the pursuit of their own self-interest. Sectarianism, thus, is by no means ‘socially endogenous’, but rather ‘a modern political construct’ that has become increasingly politicized and institutionalized (Makdisi 2000: 164): ‘Time and experience have largely rendered sectarianism an integral part of Lebanon’s social and political culture; it is now deeply entrenched in the country’s collective ethos and national behavior’ (Bahout 2018: 2). Consociationalism contributes greatly to this historical process. Within the consociational system, the different Lebanese sects are segregated and share power to prevent conflict. The assumed cultural or ethnic identities of the sects are thereby politicized and strictly defined: the communities are segregated through ‘segmental autonomy’, are represented in government proportional to their sect’s size and compete for state resources on the basis of sectarian affiliation. Rather than overcoming divisions, Lebanon’s ‘corporate’ consociational power-sharing thus fixes and perpetuates them. Indeed, Lebanese consociationalism exacerbates existing divisions by forcing its citizens to ‘resort to [their] primordial identities’ for politics (Yahya 2017: 4). Sectarianism is at least as much a consequence as an argument for consociationalism – arguably, even more.
The ‘political economy of sectarianism’, including corruption and clientelist patronage networks, stemming from Lebanon’s consociational power-sharing system, can be blamed for much of contemporary Lebanese economic malheur: ‘Lebanon’s current economic meltdown is the painful consequence of a patron-client political system, tinged with sectarian narratives and claims’ (Mazzucotelli 2020: 26). Lebanon’s institutionalization of sectarianism is criticized for the entrenchment of not only inter-sectarian conflict, but also clientelism – ‘making the Lebanese state an association of a variety of patrons’ (Hamzeh 2001: 176). These clientelist networks are successors of eighteenth-century Lebanese feudalism, though now distinctly organized along confessional lines (Hamzeh 2001: 168-71). Such networks used to be run by a zu’ama (patron). Lebanese politics today, however, is still dominated by such contemporary za’im. Businessman Rafiq Hariri or former warlords Michel Aoun and Walid Jumblatt, for example, all scions of rich elite family dynasties, play or have played prominent roles in recent politics (Apprioual 2016: 3). As Lebanese politics is conducted on the basis of sectarian affiliations, political parties are not simply ideological formations contending for state power. Rather, they are the very representatives of the sects in politics and ‘become the means for gaining access to government resources and public state services’ (Calfat 2018: 277). These parties are often not well-organized but run by such powerful family dynasties. Citizens have to rely on their sectarian leaders for access to basic services such as health and education and other state resources (Baytiyeh 2019: 226).
Therefore, by institutional design, Lebanon’s consociational system generates inter-sectarian competition. Indeed, citizens are forced to not be a Lebanese citizen, but to resort to ‘their primordial identity’ for basic services and other state resources. The support of ‘sectarian clients’ for their political blocks and zu’ama leaders, thus, is a ‘transactional obligation rather than a form of confessional loyalty’ (Hamzeh 2001: 172). Consequently, the Lebanese state ‘has been unable to provide its citizens with efficient and affordable public services’ (Apprioual 2016: 1). Moreover, this system of patronage and corruption mostly harms the poor, as the rich can more easily profit from such clientelist networks. Mazzucotelli uncovered that the current (economic-financial) crisis seems to reinforce Lebanon’s sectarian system and its clientelist networks, as ‘forms of assistance based on confessional and clientelist connections became the only life-line for many stranded families’ (2020: 39) The current COVID-19 pandemic provides these sectarian elites with opportunities to strengthen and ‘maintain their stranglehold on power and increase the dependence of an impoverished population on a network of patron-client channels’ (Mazzucotelli 2020: 41).
This clientelist dynamic not only applies to the distribution of state resources and services, but also to the allocation of private jobs and public positions. Though Ta’if was a more balanced power-sharing agreement than the earlier National Pact, Salloukh observes, it nevertheless ‘led to a bigger, more clientelist, more corrupt, less autonomous public sector, one preoccupied by predatory rentier practices along sectarian and clientelist lines’ (Salloukh 2019: 43). As the various sectarian patrons were distributing positions to their clients, the state bureaucracy grew at a staggering pace – from 75,000 in 1974 to 300,000 employees in 2017 –, putting an increasingly heavy burden on Lebanon’s financial position (Salloukh 2019: 46). Certain public organizations serve as ‘veritable sectarian bastions’: the ‘General Directorate of Urban Planning’, for example, is dominated by Druze leader Jumblatt’s PSP partisans and the party ‘Future Movement dominates the upper administrative echelons of the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities and the Ministry of Telecommunications’ (Salloukh 2019: 48-9). Unsurprisingly, Lebanon is one of the fifty most corrupt countries worldwide (Apprioual 2016).
Within the political realm, Lebanon’s consociational system has a similarly deleterious impact. First, as noted before, confessionalism leaves the Lebanese no option other than to be represented as believers of a certain faith, rather than state citizens. Weak national institutions force people to rely on sectarian patronage networks (Rosiny 2015: 489). Therefore, the idea of a more universal, national political community and, even more importantly, according national policies for basic services are absent. Given the confessional system in Lebanon, this is unsurprising. As virtually all parties are based on sectarian identification, their politics is also sectarian: for example, obtaining state resources for the own community and defending one’s community against perceived ‘existential threats’ of other sects. Consequently, ‘little room is left in their political agenda for the common good and the Lebanese nation’ (Apprioual 2016: 4). Second, with its feature of grand coalitions, consociational theory is elitist and has a substantial democratic deficit: it fails to enact universalist national policies (which is decentralized and outsourced to sectarian patronage networks), encourage citizen participation in politics and effectively respond to popular demands. As Geha (2019a) argues, non-sectarian protest movements, in particular, struggle to be heard in Lebanon’s overtly sectarianized politics. Third, Lebanon’s political non-reformism is clearly reflected in ‘the power-sharing formula’s proneness to deadlock’ (Fakhoury 2019: 11). One of Lijphart’s criteria for a consociational system is mutual veto power and, consequently, the need for consensus-based decision-making. In Lebanon, this consociational feature has generated and still generates political deadlock, as government decisions ‘require political consensus from antagonistic sectarian elites whose personal interests in many cases interfere with the national interest’ (Baytiyeh 2019: 227). This ineffectiveness is not a new phenomenon: according to the World Economic Forum, Lebanon had the fourth least efficient government in 2016 (Apprioual 2016). Moreover, only a fraction of laws actually passed dealt with issues relevant for ordinary Lebanese citizens; most attention was dedicated to ‘issues related to sectarian representation and security’ (Fakhoury 2019: 19). Such day-to-day problems, such as power outages or garbage collection, are depoliticized in order to prevent sectarian conflict and respect the confessional balance (Seaver 2000) – demonstrating the fundamentally flawed priorities of the Lebanese consociational model. Even the devastating explosion in Beirut in August 2020 can be seen as an indirect consequence of consociational failure: no one was willing take responsibility nor possessed the ability to decisively act on the presence of highly explosive material in Beirut’s port, a fact known for years (Nakhoul & Bassam 2020).
Dark prospects for Lebanon – How many young Lebanese are fed up with sectarian politics
It must be said, though, that these detrimental effects cannot be solely blamed on consociational theory in itself. In Lebanon, a particular deviant variant of consociationalism developed overtime – a flawed one, taking consociationalism ‘to its extremes’ (Calfat 2018: 283). First, Lijphart’s consociationalism is built upon the idea of proportional representation. The sectarian division of parliamentary seats and other positions in Lebanon, however, is still more or less based on the 1932 population census, which included just around one million people. Today, though, over seven million people live in Lebanon. Self-evidently, Lebanese population growth did not occur proportionally: some groups, e.g. Shi’a Muslims, expanded relative to declining groups like the Maronites (Calfat 2018: 280). Thus, while demographic realities changed, political reality mostly remained unchanged, though Ta’if brought some adjustments. Therefore, one cannot speak of proportionality in Lebanese consociationalism. Invoking their veto, those elites benefiting from this status quo – mostly the Maronite Christians – have refused new official censuses ever since 1932, which would inevitably lead to very different demographic (and political power) configurations (Salamey & Payne 2008). Second, as first stipulated in the National Pact and officially established in Ta’if, Lebanon’s power-sharing governance was intended to serve as a temporary and transitional system (Rosiny 2015: 486). As worded in Article 24 of the 1926 Constitution, this system would remain in place as ‘interim measure’ ‘until such time as the Chamber enacts new electoral laws on a non-confessional basis’ (Berkley Center 2015). However, the Ta’if Agreement fixed constitutionally what was only agreed upon verbally before: ‘Ironically, by reiterating its temporary character decades after the inception of the Lebanese state, Ta’if rendered political sectarianism’s ‘transitory’ nature more permanent than ever’ (Fakhoury 2014: 240).
Many Lebanese, however, are fed up with how politics and virtually all public life – from education to health care to sport clubs – is organized along sectarian lines. In 2019, the largest protests took place since the country’s independence. Though born out of discontent with Lebanon’s economic situation, the protests quickly targeted Lebanon’s political elites, their corruption and sectarian politics: Most of these protesters, constituting almost a quarter of the entire population, rejected the idea of homogenous, clearly distinguishable and competing sects (Yee 2019), thereby dismissing the primordial understanding of identity implicit in consociational theory. Rather, they speak of a common Lebanese identity and politics, which has been practically absent before. It is exactly this ontological and practical basis of consociationalism – that is, institutional sectarian segregation, representation and competition, all in order to avoid perceived sectarian conflict – that should be left behind. Only by eradicating this root, the entire sectarian cycle can be broken. This transition may be the only way for Lebanon to attain meaningful political and economic progress – to move beyond artificially induced sectarian division, to break patronage networks and to make the Lebanese state and society viable again.
This transition, it seems, has not even commenced at all – and it is unlikely that it will anytime soon (Fakhoury 2014). Changing the system, for most elite members and politicians, means losing political power, but also their capacity as za’im of clientelist networks. This system, therefore, is favoured by practically all Lebanese elites, ‘who would desperately strive to protect it and resist any attempt to transform Lebanon into a fully democratic state’ (Baytiyeh 2019: 228-9). Any change in the system means some sect wins and some sect loses – that is, at least, the zero-sum understanding of the sectarian elites. Every attempt to alter the sectarian balance, thus, causes a great likelihood of conflict – not because of clashing primordial identities, as consociationalists argue, but because of the politicization of these identities and the (elite) interests institutionally connected to them (Bogaards 2019). Reform efforts ‘have continually been frustrated by a resilient confessional arrangement resisting change’ (Salamey & Payne 2008: 458). Therefore, to conclude, Lebanon is unlikely to move beyond this self-reinforcing consociational cycle of clientelism and political instability soon. More likely is the prospect of a new, very different type of power-sharing in post-explosion Lebanon, notably ‘between those who represent the political economic interests of the sectarian system and those who have been frozen out and served poorly by that system’ (Salloukh 2020). The exact pathway towards a less sectarian political system in Lebanon remains unclear, but will, in any case, be one with many hurdles.
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