Tamirace Fakhoury Mühlbacher Democracy and Power-Sharing In

Tamirace Fakhoury Mühlbacher

Democracy and Power-Sharing in Stormy Weather VS RESEARCH Tamirace Fakhoury Mühlbacher

Democracy and Power-Sharing in Stormy Weather

The Case of Lebanon

With a foreword by Prof. Dr. Theodor Hanf

VS RESEARCH Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Dissertation Universität Freiburg, 2007

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1st Edition 2009

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Cover design: KünkelLopka Medienentwicklung, Heidelberg Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-531-16529-5 To the memory of Riad Fakhoury Foreword

Is democracy possible only in homogeneous societies? Does heterogeneity ex- clude a stable democracy? Throughout history, ethnic, linguistic, or religious homogeneity whether by circumstance, coercion, or choice, has seemingly been conducive to democracy. In France, democracy was established after the imposi- tion of religious uniformity and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The United States pulled in immigrants who renounced their original affiliations to forge a new identity in a newly born state. Still, defying assumptions, democracies have emerged in heterogeneous states such as the Swiss Confederation, the Successor States of the Holy Roman Empire and, later, those carved out of the previous colonial empires. One common feature is the failure of – often violent – attempts to enforce homogeneity, or the lack of any such attempt in the first place. In the course of time, these divided societies have learned to live in diversity, to pacify their differences, and to find a path towards peace or at least accommodation. In sum, they went beyond forms of sepa- rating powers to sharing power. Whether defined by ethnicity, language, religion, or even ideology, communities agreed to a pact on participating in a joint government based on proportional or even equal representation. It is noteworthy that political systems based on power-sharing were long marginal in mainstream political science which laid an emphasis on democratic transitions in homogeneous societies and on socio-economic or cultural prerequisites that facilitate the rise of democracy. However, this changed in the 1960s with the emergence of a new “consociation- alist” school which proposed treating power-sharing systems as a distinct type of democracy capable of overcoming divisive cleavages and of securing coexistence. Since then, the power-sharing model in divided societies has inspired a plethora of writings. Numerous studies elaborated theoretical frameworks that outlined the features of this model and pondered the conditions facilitating or thwarting its applicability. With time, the model acquired normative and prescriptive functions and was even recommended for pacifying conflict-ridden societies in which forceful attempts of homogenization had aggravated dissension. Nowadays, in the wake of the colonial empires’collapse and later the break up of the Soviet Union, which led to the creation of so many non-homogeneous states, modes of governance based on power-sharing seem to become the rule rather than the exception. Still, the relevance of power-sharing systems needs to be analyzed with caution. Cyprus’ unstable consociational experience, Lebanon’s power-sharing breakdown 8 Foreword in 1975 and the fragility of its post-war predicament, recent constitutional paralysis in Belgium, doubts pertaining to the effectiveness of the power-sharing model in Switzerland after the country’s largest political party was no longer represented in government prompt daunting questions about the sustainability of power-sharing models as well as about their effectiveness in times of polarization. Hence, it seems of paramount importance to reassess the concept of power-sharing, to re-explore its limitations and reexamine its prescriptive value. This book is to be viewed as an eminent contribution to this undertaking. Tamirace Fakhoury proposes to refocus attention on the power-sharing model of governance by identifying its potentialities and its limitations as well as by sub- stantiating suggestions for further theoretical study. She then proceeds to testing the applicability of the model to a major case study which has provided an empirical benchmark to Arend Lijphart’s concept of consociational democracy: Lebanon. After examining Lebanon’s pre-war power-sharing model as well as the factors behind its collapse in 1975, the study focuses on Lebanon’s post-war order by depict- ing on the one hand its democratic/autocratic components and its power-sharing traits on the other hand. With the ratification of the Ta’if Treaty in 1991, Lebanon’s consociational democracy turned into an ambiguous system, characterized by a complex mix of democratic, authoritarian, and power-sharing pressures. The emergence of a consociation heavily influenced by external factors impaired power-sharing devices, and disfigured the politics of accommodation. The book proposes a contextual framework for analysing the internal and exogenous factors that affect Lebanon’s consociational system. It shows how, beyond the variable of the “self-negating prophecy”, the small republic’s fate remains interwoven with its regional environment and heavily influenced by various institutional, communal and elite conditions. The interplay of internal and external factors in the Lebanese case conditions the resilience of the power-sharing model of governance and reveals its dependence on an auspicious configuration without which consociational settlements are prone to instability. A further merit of this study is its attempt to link the theory of consociationalism with the more recent works on transitology and democratic transition, bringing to the fore the necessity of studying the democratic or un-democratic components of the system as a major variable that impacts power-sharing dynamics. Beyond the implications the study has on the Lebanese case, it reveals broader insights that transcend the Lebanese experience as such and tell much about the shortcomings and benefits of consociational settlements in deeply divided societies.

Theodor Hanf Acknowledgments

The idea of writing a dissertation on Lebanon’s political transition, initially inspired by a discussion with Lebanese academics in 2001 in Beit Chabab (Mount Lebanon), had several underlying motives. The most important one was an earnest desire to understand the overlapping external and internal mechanisms that contribute to Lebanon’s unstable predicament. Yet, this would not have been possible without the precious help of my advisor, Professor Dr. Theodor Hanf, who helped me evaluate Lebanon’s complex situation with an objective eye. I thank him for his immense assistance and mostly for his confidence in me. I also thank him for offering me the opportunity to conduct research at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg. I would also like to thank my co-adviser, Professor Dr. Jürgen Rüland who offered valuable guidance. A special thanks goes to Professor Heribert Weiland who provided me with significant intellectual support during my stay at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute. I also wish to thank the German Service for Academic Exchange (DAAD) that funded my research project at the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg. Furthermore, I extend many thanks to my friends, especially Coralie Hindawi, and Ulrike Ostertag, for their support during the writing phase, and to my colleagues at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, especially to Margret Rae, Leslie Tramontini, and Matthias Seifert, who assisted me with the correction. Many thanks go also to my colleagues Martin Adelman, Petra Bauerle, Marcel Bau- mann, Hannelore Fladerer, Angela Hermann, Clemens Juergenmeyer, Beatrice Schlee, Jan Voelkel, and many others who have made my stay at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute pleasant and enriching. I would particularly like to thank my family in Lebanon. I am mostly grateful to my mother Amal and to my sister Tala for their encouragement and valuable advice. I am also thankful to my brothers, Omar and Wael, for their inspirational remarks. A special note of gratitude goes to Jörg Muehlbacher who offered valuable help during the writing and editing phases. Finally, I hope that this study of Lebanon’s power-sharing and democratization since 1943 will shed some light on Lebanon’s conundrum and prospects for stability.

Tamirace Fakhoury Contents

Introductory Overview ...... 17 A general review of the literature on Lebanon ...... 21 Statement of the problem ...... 27 Hypotheses and study structure ...... 28 Long-term implications and contributions of the study ...... 31 The method of research ...... 32 Further methods of inquiry ...... 33

1. Review and Critique of the Literature on Consociational Democracy 35 Theorizing consociationalism: The evolution of the theory ...... 40 Consociational democracy as a prescriptive model in deeply fragmented societies ...... 45 The other side of the medal ...... 47 A criticism of the consociational model ...... 48 A criticism of the consociational theory ...... 54 Lijphart’s reaction: A struggle against all odds? ...... 70 The survivability of consociational democracy ...... 73 The consociational model and its relation to our case study ...... 75

2. Pre-War Lebanon:A Dance into the Abyss of Consociationalism . . . . 77 Consociational democracy in pre-war Lebanon: The characteristics of the model ...... 77 The factors conducive to consociational democracy: Why are they problematic? ...... 79 Performance of the pre-war consociational model (1943–1975) ...... 85 The strengths of the pre-war consociational model ...... 86 The defects of the pre-war consociational model ...... 93 An inevitable collapse? An inquiry into the reasons behind consociational failure ...... 102 A zone of turbulences ...... 114 The elite factor in the consociational breakdown (1967–1976) ...... 126 The economic factor in the consociational breakdown ...... 130 Synthesis: The status of the favorable factors revisited ...... 135 12 Contents

3. Post-War Lebanon:The Lost Republic’s Peregrinations ...... 137 The rise of a competitive semi-authoritarian regime (1990–2005) ...... 137 The deconstruction of the democratic myth in the Second Republic ...... 139 The transition paradigm ...... 143 Hybrid regimes, types and characteristics ...... 145 Lebanon in the transition paradigm: A peculiar tale ...... 157 The architecture of semi-authoritarianism: The indicators (1990–2004) . . . 158 The Ta’if setting, background and aftermath ...... 159 The truncated implementation of the Ta’if agreement ...... 164 Syrian predominance and the Lebanese-Syrian riddle of semi-authoritarianism (1976–2004) ...... 176 Post-war elections: A tool of semi-authoritarianism ...... 195 Points of elite authority ...... 207 The triumph of authoritarian pressures in 2004 ...... 225 Synthesis: The games that Lebanese semi-authoritarianism played ...... 243

4. Post-War Lebanon’s Long and Perilous Road to Democracy ...... 245 Lebanese democracy: A question of relativity? ...... 246 Democratic pressures in the 1990s ...... 249 The endurance of the Lebanese civil society ...... 249 Political opposition ...... 251 The role of religious elites ...... 253 The 2000 opening ...... 254 A gust of political liberty after 2000? ...... 256 The limitations and aftermath of the 2000 opening ...... 258 Lebanon’s 2005 transition: the end of the competitive authoritarian regime? 261 The 2005 awakening and its underlying motives: The first signs of transition ...... 262 Second phase of the democratic awakening ...... 279 The backstory of the Beirut Spring: A critique ...... 285 Third phase of the transition: Augurs of institutional revival ...... 290 Fourth phase of the transition: Syria’s departure or the ‘end of the affair’ . . . 292 Fifth phase of the transition: Lebanon’s summer parliamentary elections . . . 294 The first post-Syrian coalition cabinet and its difficult birth ...... 302 The international probe into Hariri’s Killing: Towards more transparency? . 305 The opposite side of the coin or the persistence of authoritarian waves . . . . 309 Residues of the Lebanese-Syrian constellation and surviving loyalties . . . . 309 An evaluation of Lebanon’s transition to a low-intensity democracy ...... 317 Analysis of Lebanon’s path to system transition in 2005 ...... 318 Rethinking Lebanon’s minimal democracy: A looming backlash? ...... 323 A long road ahead ...... 324 Contents 13

5. What about Post-War Consociationalism? ...... 327 The rise of a ‘chaperoned’ power-sharing model: The failure of grand coalitions under Syrian tutelage (1990–2005) ...... 328 The Troika or the oligarchic elite cartel: Its effects on coalition-building and institutions (1992–1998) ...... 330 The emergence of a shadow government: A case of “coercive consociationalism” ...... 336 The gradual breakdown of the security state and the rise of a bipolar model of consociationalism ...... 344 The national political schism: A study of prevailing political cleavages . . . . 345 The implications of political cleavages on power-sharing ...... 357 Coalition building during the phase of bipolarity ...... 358 Synthesis: Prerequisites and devices of consociational democracy at peril . . 360 Augurs of a power-sharing reawakening? ...... 361 The resilience of Lebanese consociationalism ...... 362 The 2005 Beirut Spring: Low-intensity power-sharing ...... 363 The partial revival of consociational devices in the post-Syrian era ...... 368 Demystifying the 2005 power-sharing revival ...... 371 Consociation in difficulty: Shaky patterns of elite accommodation ...... 371 Lebanon’s shackled foreign policy: The impossible condition of non-alignment and the increase of external burdens on the porous republic after 2005 ...... 391 Communal segmentation in post-war Lebanon ...... 409 Dark clouds over Lebanon’s consociationalism ...... 419

6. Final Appraisal ...... 425

Crafting a Consociational Democracy:The Limits of the ‘Self-Negating Prophecy’ ...... 425 The prospects for Lebanon’s consociational democracy ...... 429 Reinventing consociationalism: For a gradualist path ...... 430 Consociational challenges: How to turn a low-intensity model of power-sharing into a viable democracy? ...... 432 Institutional engineering: Synchronizing democracy and power-sharing . . . 432 Institutionalized deadlock-breaking mechanisms ...... 433 A solution to communal desegmentation ...... 435 Reformulating the problem of national identity ...... 442 An external or internal solution to Lebanon’s oppressive alignment?: The making of a cautious foreign policy ...... 447 An ill-timed reform for an agonizing consociation? ...... 452 14 Contents

Bibliography ...... 455 Consociational theory ...... 455 Democracy and democratic transition ...... 459 Pre- and post-war Lebanon ...... 462 Country review ...... 475 Politics and system transition in the Middle East ...... 476 List of Figures

Figure 3.1: System transition ...... 150 Figure 3.2: System transition ...... 150 Figure 3.3: Subtypes of pseudo-democracies ...... 150 Figure 3.4: Subtypes of electoral authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes ...... 151 Figure 3.5: Pattern of gradation ...... 152 Figure 3.6: Pattern of degradation ...... 152 Figure 4.1: The 2005 legislature ...... 300 Figure 4.2: The path to Lebanon’s 2005 system transition ...... 320 Figure 5.1: The bipolar rift between the 8 and the 14 March Coalitions . . . . 353 Figure 5.2: The rise of a bipolar system in the post-1559 era ...... 358 Figure 6.1: Lebanon’s chronological system transition since 1943 ...... 427 Figure 6.2: From a fragmented to a concordant culture ...... 442 Figure 6.3: Consolidating the Lebanese identity ...... 447 Figure 6.4: The stability pyramid (from bottom to top) ...... 451 Introductory Overview

“This time, they should agree on Lebanon’s meaning: do external powers want to make out of it a battlefield where old scores are settled or a success story for Arab democracy?”1

By the middle of that decade, a fleeting wind of democracy blew in the Arab world. Political theories tackling the region’s “democratic resistance”2 were increasingly examined with a sceptical eye as competitive elections in Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon heralded a new Middle Eastern era.3 This array of political events prompted worldwide attention, and inspired naïve visions of Arab democratization stemming from the ‘Iraq effect.’ However, no sooner did it become obvious that this stream of democracy was largely an elusive consequence of externally monitored democracy assistance,4 and partly an instrument of survival in closed regimes5 than strong disbeliefs resurfaced: the robust authoritarian constructs of Arab regimes6 cannot be altered in a short period of time, and “the democratic elixir”7 cannot be instilled overnight.

1 Anonymous, interview with the author, 16 July 2006. 2 Peter Pawelka, “Der Staat im Vorderen Orient: Über die Demokratieresistenz in einer globalisierten Welt,” Leviathan 30 (2002): 431-454. 3 Richard Beeston and Rana Sabbagh-Gargour, “Democracy Dawns in Arab world,” Times, March 3, 2005, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,251-1508354,00.html. 4 Partly a consequence of the US plan to restructure the region after the September 11 attacks. 5 For example, the Egyptian polls that took place end of 2005 and that were characterized by an increasing degree of liberalization were interpreted as a premeditated attempt by the regime to create an illusion of freedom. For strategies and patterns of “liberalized” autocracies in the Middle East, see Daniel Brumberg, “Democratization in the Arab World? The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy,” Journal of Democracy 13 (2002): 56-68. 6 See Eva Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics 36 (2004): 139-153. To explain why the Arab states cannot democratize so easily, Bellin invokes the factors of the solidity of the authoritarian apparatus and failed institutionalism. 7 Augustus Richard Norton, and Farhad Kazemi, “The Limits of Shock and Awe: America in the Middle East,” Current History (January 2005): 3-9, 3. 18 Introductory Overview

The Arab Spring’s shallow hull and its incapacity to bring about genuine political change came into sharper focus as analysts questioned the US plan to reinstitute the fabric of the Middle East,8 and to unleash through a domino effect, seismic waves of fragile liberalization.9 The democratic spell was broken, and the wind of change subsided. A reverse wave of liberal erosion seemed even to lurk on the horizon as excessive external pressure provoked fears of regional destabilization. Thus, in the wake of an anarchic post-Saddam Iraq, disenchantment with the ambitious US Middle Eastern agenda, and fear of system change caused authoritarian elites to apprehend all the more the increase of internal freedoms, and to hide behind the regime’s autocratic armor waiting for the international whirlwind to pass by.10 Amidst this confusion, Lebanon, with its “dissonant politics,”11 seemed to have escaped the region’s authoritarian lot. Faring well after the 2005 Beirut Spring and the ensuing Syrian withdrawal, the small Arab Republic reconfirmed its predisposition to democracy in a troubled region. Considered by system analysts as a singular “political field” entailing competition and power-sharing,12 it appeared to validate the claim that – despite a wrecking war – democratic structures could re-emerge and stand firm under the strangest circumstances. Yet, Lebanon’s story of system change does not depict a linear transition to

8 For more details on the limits of the US democratizing initiative in the Middle East, see Marina Ottoway and Thomas Carothers, “The Greater Middle East Initative: Off to a False Start,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (March 2004), http://www.wiamep.org/resources/ CarnegiePolicybrief29.pdf. The authors argue that introducing political transformations in the region is bound to fail if the initial problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not tackled. 9 According to some analysts, the Arab Spring was stimulated by the shock wave following the invasion of Iraq. Events signalling the rise of a democratic era in the Arab world, such as the announcement of liberalization measures in Egypt and Saudia Arabia, and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, were interpreted as “promising but fragile” augurs. See Ran Halevi, “Fragile printemps arabe,” Le Figaro, April 18, 2005, http://www.lefigaro.fr/debats/20050418.FIG0305 .html. 10 The excessive international pressure on authoritarian regimes in the Middle East has led authoritarian elites to be more cautious and frightened of losing their power. In spring 2006, for instance, the Egyptian and Syrian governments staged crackdowns on internal oppositionists. These crackdowns coincided with the escalation of US pressure on Syria, the US-Iranian altercation over the nuclear file, and with the increase of riots in Iraq. See for example “Egypt: Amnesty International Concerned about the Egyptian Security Repression against Peaceful Protesters in Cairo,” Amnesty International, May 11, 2006 http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ ENGMDE120092006?open&of=ENG-2MD, and “Syria: Another Wave of Arrests of Human Rights Defenders and Civil Society Activists,” Amnesty International, May 17, 2006, http://web.amnesty.org/ library/Index/ENGMDE240382006?open&of=ENG-2MD. 11 Daniel Brumberg, “Islamists and the Politics of Consensus,” Journal of Democracy 13 (2002):109-115, 112. 12 Ibid., 112. Introductory Overview 19 democracy. In fact, its soul-searching could be more described as a series of stopovers in inconclusive gateways of political change. Described as “the only Arab country to sustain a form of democracy [...] for a significant period of time”13 and endowed with a pre-democratic history dating back to Ottoman Mount Lebanon, Lebanon has indeed strayed far from its neighbors. Hence, after its independence from French rule in 1943, a power- sharing national pact gave substantial shape to the communal aspirations of living in one nation-state. This accord was based on the vision of a Lebanese entity built on the basis of coexistence, and dependent on a state of inter- communal equilibrium.14 In this project of coexistence, the exclusion of any community or the monopoly of any other would lead to fragmentation and destabilization of political order. 15 After the materialization of the 1943 pact, Lebanon’s politics of concordance seemed to constitute a shield against centrifugalism and the penetration of regional authoritarianism. In fact, scholars were long puzzled by this republic which constituted an example of a paradoxical yet happy phenomenon. What made the Lebanese formula even more astounding was its viability in spite of 17 different confessions.16 It was even suggested that this confessional pluralism need not be a disintegrative tool, but could be efficiently channelled to fit evolving political patterns.17 Nevertheless, as time went by, Lebanon’s political structure revealed many underlying schisms. The moment regional upheavals loomed large, the power- sharing apparatus unveiled deep contradictions that exacerbated internal cleavages and gave fuel to the fire. Following the intensification of regional conflicts in the aftermath of the Israeli-Arab Six-Day War, the consociational arrangement was no longer able to mend fractures that tore apart the political fabric, and communalism degenerated into a formula for antagonisms: A 15-year war with domestic, regional and international dimensions, was more than sufficient to shatter the precarious foundations of consociational democracy upon which the Lebanese polity was built. During the vicissitudes of a long and exhausting war, Lebanon’s previous politics of concordance came to stand for a utopia which cannot triumph over the restrictive political reality in turbulent regions.

13 Samuel Huntington, “Democracy’s Third Wave,” Journal of Democracy 2 (1991):12-34, 28. 14 Michel Chiha, Politique intérieure (Beirut: Fondation Michel Chiha, 1964), 54-55. 15 Ibid. 16 Brenda Seaver, “The Regional Sources of Power-Sharing Failure: The Case of Lebanon,” Political Science Quarterly 115 (2000): 247-271. 17 Samir Khalaf, “Primordial Ties and Politics in Lebanon,” Middle Eastern Studies 4 (1968): 243- 269 20 Introductory Overview

Still, as armed conflicts were drawing to an end in 1989, a new power- sharing agreement referred to as the Ta’if covenant and facilitated by international and regional powers, re-enlivened and institutionalized the informal 1943 national pact in a new modus vivendi. It seemed that despite the misfortunes of warfare, Lebanon was set to embark on a new post-conflict trip to peace and stability. However, with the internal dissidence caused by lingering hostilities, the biased implementation of the Ta'if agreement, and the preponderant role that Syria acquired in Lebanon after the ratification of the pact, analysts asked whether the reborn Lebanon did not in fact resemble more “a floating country with no identifiable center of gravity.”18 Throughout the post- war period, it was even suggested that, under Syrian guardianship, Lebanon was acquiring the traits of a closed system and that its power-sharing distinctiveness was dissolving into a disfigured consociational oligarchy. In 2005, in spite of its nebulous post-war predicament, Lebanon again neared the democratic shore after a kind of opposition-led movement in unison with international pressure broke the chains of the post-Ta’if legacy. The international community hailed the dawn of Lebanon’s 2005 ‘white revolution’ as a success story which proved that democracy could be infused in the Arab world despite the festering Middle Eastern conflict. Surprisingly enough, the Lebanese tale took yet another unexpected turn as two successive “Summers of Rage”19 dealt a heavy blow to the fragments of hope that were in full bloom on March 14, 2005, considered to be the epitome of Lebanon’s Democratic Spring. After Syrian withdrawal and the free 2005 parliamentary elections, a series of upheavals thrust Lebanon’s Janus face back into the limelight. First, a string of political assassinations called to mind the country’s defective state structures and porousness. Second, the previously called ‘pearl of the Mediterranean’ had to face a 34-day war which turned its Southern part into ‘a no man’s land’, and deferred political stability to better days. Israel’s largest offensive in Lebanon since the 1982 invasion overshadowed the memory of the Beirut Spring, and confirmed that Lebanon remained an arena for the unsettled regional strife. Comparatively speaking, whereas 2005 was considered to be the springtime of liberalization not only for Lebanon but also for the Middle East, the years 2006 and 2007 tolled the delusive chant of democracy and stability. On a regional level, Lebanon’s descending dance into the abyss of violence was

18 See Farid El Khazen, “Lebanon’s Communal Elite-Mass Politics: The Institutionalization of Disintegration,” The Beirut Review (1992): 53-82, 78. 19 I refer to summer 2005 in which political assassinations were perpetrated and the subsequent Hezbollah-Israeli war in July 2006. Introductory Overview 21 accompanied by foreboding disturbance namely the growing internal upheavals in Iraq after the US-led offensive, the Western war on terror, the US-Iranian altercation over Teheran’s nuclear program, and the derailment of the Middle East process after Israel’s two- front war in Lebanon and Gaza. In addition, by bringing to the fore dreaded partners in the Middle Eastern arena, the rhetoric of political reform ended up producing a boomerang effect and backfiring on its ‘orchestrators.’ The radicalization of non-state actors,20 the strengthening of fundamentalist actors, as well as the emergence of a “Shiite Crescent” of resistance from Lebanon to Iran21 signalled an impending regional unsteadiness, and a dangerous Sunni-Shiite polarization slicing the region. It became obvious that ‘the new Middle East’ which has emerged – after the democratic wind abated – was closer to a battlefield than to the US vision of an Arab world living in “democratic peace.”22 It is within this double-barrelled setting of regional authoritarianism and turmoil, reform and relapse that Lebanon has been struggling since its formation. Torn between its regional calling and its internal vocation of communal coexistence, overburdened with the heavy load on its political system, consociational Lebanon does not seem to enjoy favorable factors for political stability. First, easily drawn into the regional cyclone, the small porous polity has become a barometer for the troublesome state of affairs in the Middle East. Moreover, lost in a constellation of contradictory loyalties, its own internal confessional structure seems to stand in the way of further development. More importantly, its power-sharing politics pivots more around interplay of extrinsic factors than around the magic formula of deliberative democracy.

A general review of the literature on Lebanon

Since Lebanon’s creation in 1943, its power-sharing model and democratic apparatus have inspired a plethora of writings. Many studies particularly focused on the study of the Lebanese divided society as well as its communal

20 The international community has been dealing with caution and reluctance with non-state actors – such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine – which have consolidated their power in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. 21 For more information on the rise of the Shiite crescent, see Ashar Susser, “Aufgang des schiitischen Halbmonds,” Internationale Politik (September 2006): 68-73. 22 The theory of democratic peace claims that democracies do not fight against each other. It is noted that this theory inspired the US-led initiative of democratization in the Middle East. See Norton and Kazemi, “The Limits of Shock,” 3. 22 Introductory Overview cleavages,23 and attempted to retrace the patterns of coexistence as well as the segments’ antagonistic perceptions in a historical perspective.24 The Lebanese consociational system has notably constituted a major area of scholarly interest. Integrated in major international works on consociational democracy,25 the Lebanese power-sharing model has been subsequently reassessed against the backdrop of the consociational theory. 26 Consociational Lebanon has recently inspired comparative approaches which examine its power- sharing evolution in an international perspective.27 In addition to the consociational approach, various studies assessed Lebanon’s communalism by analyzing the intricacies of Lebanon’s state formation, the 1943 power-sharing pact and the circumstances that led to its adoption in the 1940s.28 This alternative approach enabled the study of background and historical factors which shaped the power-sharing trajectory, and allowed a better understanding of the conflicting communal perceptions and the clashing visions of Lebanese identity. A general inspection of the literature written on Lebanon’s power-sharing model and political institutions has allowed me to draw noteworthy remarks

23 Eminent works which analyze Lebanon’s segmental cleavages and communal structure in a comparative perspective are: Latif Abul Husn, The Lebanese Conflict: Looking Inward (Boulder, Rienner, 1998); Samir Khalaf, Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon: a History of the Internationalization of Communal Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Theodor Hanf, Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon (London: The Center for Lebanese Studies & I.B. Tauris, 1993). 24 Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 25 Gerhard Lehmbruch, “Consociational Democracy in the International System,” European Journal of Political Research 3 (1975): 377-391; Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). 26 Richard Hrair Dekmejian, “Consociational Democracy in Crisis: The Case of Lebanon,” Comparative Politics 10 (1978): 251-266; Antoine Messarra, Théorie générale du système politique libanais (Paris: Cariscript, 1994); Andrew Rigby, “Lebanon: Patterns of Confessional Politics,” Parliamentary Affairs 53 (2000): 169-180. 27 Sanaa Ashour, Ethnic politics and Policymaking in Lebanon and Malaysia (Göttingen: Cuvillier, 2004); Arfi Badredine, International Change and the Stability of Multiethnic Societies: Yugoslavia, Lebanon, and Crises of Governance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Michael Kerr, Imposing Power-Sharing: Conflict and Coexistence in Nothern Ireland and Lebanon (Ireland: Irish Academic Press, 2005). 28 For an analysis of colonial times and the historical factors that paved the way for the Lebanese state formation and the adoption of the 1943 National Pact, see for example Kais M. Firro, Inventing Lebanon: Nationalism and the State under the Mandate (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003); Edmond Rabbath, La formation historique du Liban politique et constitutionnel (Beirut: Libraire Orientale, 1973); Raghid el Solh, Lebanon and Arabism: National Identity and State Formation (London: Tauris, 2004); Eyal Zisser, Lebanon: The Challenge of Independence (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000). Introductory Overview 23 pertinent to my topic. These inferences revolve first around the intellectual debate on Lebanon’s consociationalism, second around the ‘regime question’ of the Lebanese polity, and third around the shifting scholarly interests concerning the Lebanese state. First, upon reviewing the literature on pre-war consociationalism, one notices that a major subject of academic disagreement is the nature of the system itself. Whereas some analysts portray the pre-war power-sharing model as a source for many ills, and detect causation between the system and the outbreak of the war in 1975,29 others regard the power-sharing formula as a framework which allowed Lebanon to cope with its dividing cleavages.30 The nature of the 1975 consociational breakdown has notably fuelled much controversy. Whilst some analysts attribute the inauspicious collapse to an intrinsic error inherent to the power-sharing system,31 others assert that regional and international factors played an overriding role.32 In fact, conspicuous disagreement on the reasons behind the consociational crash prevails up to now.33 On the other hand, the democratic components of pre-war institutions have also been examined from various perspectives. Remarkable analytical studies tackled the institutional structures and their functional attributes before the outbreak of the war.34 Whereas some works attracted attention to the resilience and endurance of the Lebanese democracy in a turbulent environment,35 other critical writings questioned the sustainability of the precarious Lebanese

29 Michael Hudson, “The Lebanese Crisis: The Limits of Consociational Democracy,” Journal of Palestine Studies 5 (1976):109-122. 30 David R. Smock and Audrey C. Smock, The Politics of Pluralism: A Comparative Study of Lebanon and Ghana, (New York: Elsevier, 1975). 31 Hudson, “The Problem of Authoritative Power in Lebanese Politics: Why Consociationalism Failed,” in Lebanon: A History of Conflict and Consensus, eds Nadim Shehadi and Dana Haffar Mills (London: The Center of Lebanese Studies & I.B. Tauris, 1988), 224-239; Joseph G. Jabbra and Nancy W. Jabbra, “Consociational Democracy in Lebanon: A Flawed System of Governance,” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 17 (2001), 71-89. 32 Farid El Khazen, The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon 1967-1976 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000); Brenda M. Seaver, “The Regional Sources.” 33 For a detailed literary review of the literature on Lebanon’s consociational collapse, see chapter 2, section 2.3. 34 Leonard Binder, ed., Politics in Lebanon (New York: Wiley, 1966); Hudson, The Precarious Republic (New York: Random House, 1968). 35 Ralph Crow, “Parliament in the Lebanese Political System,” in Legislatures in Developmental Perspective, eds Allan Kornberg and Lloyd D. Musolf (North Carolina: Duke, 1970), 273-302. 24 Introductory Overview democratic apparatus, its low degrees of institutionalization,36 and put into question its degree of democratization.37 In the aftermath of the 15-year war, one notices a shift of scholarly interest from the consociational framework to the exploration of prospects for stability in a post-conflict society. While less academic works devote pure attention to an analysis of the post-war consociational dynamics and their relation to the theory of power-sharing,38 many writings concentrate on the specific dynamics of the political landscape inherited from the war39 and on the perspectives of sustainable conflict-regulation.40 Whereas fewer studies praise Lebanon’s surviving democratic institutions and political pluralism,41 major emphasis is laid on the deficient structures of a “derailed” democracy,42 and on emergent political institutions heavily influenced by Syrian guardianship.43 In addition to the scholarly interest in deformed post-war institutions, various studies explicitly deal with the mechanisms and impact of the post-war Pax Syriana on a subordinated republic.44 Contrary to pre-war literature which

36 See Hudson, Precarious Republic. 37 David Gilmour, Lebanon: The Fractured Country (Oxford: Robertson, 1983), 3. 38 There are of course notable exceptions which tackled Lebanon’s consensual politics since 1990 by relying on the consociational model. See for example Antoine Messarra, La gouvernance d'un système consensuel: le Liban après les amendements constitutionnels de 1990 (Beyrouth, Librairie Orientale, 2003). 39 Notable works which analyze the post-war landscape are: Kail C. Ellis, ed., Lebanon's Second Republic: Prospects for the Twenty-First Century (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002); Theodor Hanf and Nawaf Salam, ed., Lebanon in Limbo: Postwar Society and State in an Uncertain Regional Environment (Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag Gesellschaft, 2003); Elizabeth Picard, Lebanon, A Shattered Country: Myths and Realities of the Wars in Lebanon (New York: Holmes and Meier, 2002); Nawaf Salam, ed., Options for Lebanon (London: Center for Lebanese Studies in association with IB Tauris, 2004). 40 Volker Perthes, “Lebanon: Ripeness for Regulation and Post-Civil War Conflicts,” in Civil Wars: Consequences and Possibilities for Regulation, eds Heinrich Krumwiede and Peter Waldmann (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000),153-165. 41 Notable exceptions are: Abdo Baaklini, Guilain Denoeux, and Robert Springborg, “Lebanon,” in Legislative Politics in the Arab World: The Resurgence of Democratic Institutions (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), 79-109; Illiya Harik, “Pluralism in the Arab World,” Journal of Democracy 5 (1994): 43-56, 51. 42 See Hassan A.G. Al-Khatib, The General Factors for the Collapse of Democracy in Lebanon (London: Hassan Al-Khatib,1994); Judith Palmer Harik, “Democray (again) Derailed: Lebanon’s Ta’if Paradox,” in Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World, eds Rex Brynen, Baghat Korany and Paul Noble, (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998); Paul Salem, “Framing Post-War Lebanon: Perspectives on the Constitution and the Structure of Power,” Mediterranean Politics 3 (1998): 13-26. 43 See for example El Khazen, “The Postwar Political Process: Authoritarianism by Diffusion,” in Lebanon in Limbo, 53-74; Hilal Khashan, “Lebanon’s 1996 Controversial Parliamentary Elections,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 20 (1997): 24-49. 44 Habib C. Malik, Between Damascus and Jerusalem: Lebanon and Middle East Peace (The Introductory Overview 25 exhibits in a general manner great interest in the resilience of the power-sharing formula, post-war literature examines with great circumspection the power- sharing patterns of politics transmitted by the consociational Ta’if pact.45 Many scholars question to what extent the post-war inter-communal agreement can be considered as an instrument for conflict-regulation as its implementation has been impaired by various intrinsic and extrinsic factors.46 An additional plethora of work evaluates post-war communal relations against the background of the Lebanese conflict and its ramifications. Whereas some works portray the perspectives of consociational coexistence in a positive light,47 a large number of studies highlight the disintegrative effect of confessionalism,48 and the patterns of communal marginalization in the post-war patchwork.49 More recently, in light of the stalling Middle Eastern peace process, increasing attention has been riveted on Lebanon’s status in regional politics. Prominent works and articles have shed light on the regional dimension of Lebanon’s internal politics and on Lebanon’s dilemma in interaction with its troubled surroundings.50 Despite this diversification of analytical approaches which do not only concentrate on Lebanon’s political and communal dynamics but also depict the polity’s status in the Middle East, fewer studies attempted to reconcile Lebanon’s consociational and democratic system trends in one analytical mold and in regard to transitional politics. More particularly, not much attention has been paid to the correlations and interactions between Lebanon’s consociational and democratic

Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1997); Fida Nasrallah, “The Treaty of Brotherhood, Co-operation and Co-Ordination,” in State and Society in Syria and Lebanon, ed. Youssef M. Choueiri (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1993),103-111. 45 Michael Hudson, “Lebanon After Ta’if: Another Reform Opportunity Lost,” Arab Studies Quarterly 21 (1999): 27-40; Augustus Richard Norton, “Lebanon After Ta’if: Is the Civil War Over?” The Middle East Journal 45 (1991): 457-473. 46 For an evaluation of the post-war consociational pact or the Ta’if agreement, see Joseph Maila, “The Ta’if Accord: An Evaluation” in Peace for Lebanon?: From War to Reconstruction, ed. Deirdre Collings (Boulder: Rienner, 1994), 31-44. 47 See Abul Husn, The Lebanese Conflict. 48 Elizabeth Picard, “Les habits neufs du communautarisme libanais,” Cultures & Conflits 16 (1994): 49-70; Sami Ofeish, “Lebanon’s Second Republic: Secular Talk, Sectarian Application,” Arab Studies Quarterly 21, (1999): 97-116. 49 Carole Dagher, “Bring Down the Walls: Lebanon’s Postwar Challenge (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000); Samir Khalaf, Civil and Uncivil Violence; Elizabeth Picard, The Demobilization of the Lebanese Militias (Oxford: Center for Lebanese Studies, 1999). 50 See for example Marius Deeb, Syria's Terrorist War on Lebanon and the Peace Process (London: Palgrave Macmillan: 2003); Robert G. Rabil, Embattled Neighbors: Syria, Israel, and Lebanon (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publ: 2003). 26 Introductory Overview patterns on the one hand, and the Lebanese regime’s mutations from a transitologist perspective.51 Hence, on a broader scale, Lebanon’s pre-war and post-war patterns of evolution have not been seriously integrated in the mainstream literature on democratic transitions. Whilst the democratic transition paradigm has inspired innumerable comparative works worldwide,52 Lebanon’s patterns of system change which do not fit in the linear trajectory of democratization,53 have been made little of.54 Moreover, in most of the comparative literature on political systems in the Middle East, the “limited” case of Lebanon’s exceptionalism,55 which is not compatible with the complex features of Arab authoritarianism, is not thoroughly examined.56

51 Transitology stands for the study of democratic transitions or the study of system transformation from autocracy to democracy. 52 For a review of research studies on democratic transitions, see Gerardo L. Munck, “The Regime Question, Theory Building in Democracy Studies,” World Politics 54 (2001): 119-144. 53 Although a transition towards democracy tends to differ from on case to the other, it has been generally defined as the dissolution of an authoritarian regime and the installation of some kind of democracy. The second phase comprises the consolidation of the emergent democracy. For a theoretical analysis of democratic transitions, see Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Scott Mainwaring, “Transitions to Democracy and Democratic Consolidation: Theoretical and Comparative Issues,” in Issues in Democratic Consolidation Issues: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective, eds Scott Mainwaring, J. Samuel Valenzuela and Guillermo O’Donnell (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1992), 294- 341. 54 In Journal of Democracy, for example, whereas various previous issues tackled the prospects for Arab democratization, it was only in the wake of premier Hariri’s slaying that the Lebanese political scene has been reviewed. See Oussama Safa, “Lebanon Springs Forward,” Journal of Democracy 17 (2006): 22-37. 55 Farhad Kazemi and Augustus Richard Norton, “Harliners and Softliners in the Middle East: Problems of Governance and the Prospects for Liberalization in Authoritarian Political Systems,” in Democracy and its Limits: Lessons from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, eds Howard Handelman and Mark Tessler (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 69-89, 76. 56 Upon assessing system change and prospects for democratization in the Middle East, major focus is laid on authoritarian systems, their strategies of subsistence, and their dynamics. Though present, the study of the Lebanese democratic structures in comparative and dynamic perspective remains marginal. For an analysis of political regimes in the Middle East which includes Lebanon albeit marginally, see Clement M. Henry and Robert Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); David Garnham and Mark Tessler, eds, Democracy, War and Peace in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1995); Rex Brynen, Baghat Korany and Paul Noble, eds, Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World: Theoretical Perspectives (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Amin Saikal and Albrecht Schnabel, eds, Democratization in Introductory Overview 27

What complicates the problem even more is that even Middle Eastern countries which followed their own pathway of political transition57 have nearly been – until recently – absent from mainstream works on system transition.58 In the final analysis, whereas the traditional democratic paradigm fails to address Lebanon’s peculiar evolution, the theoretical approaches and transition studies tackling the endurance of authoritarianism in the Middle East and the behavior of authoritarian elites do not devote much space to the Lebanese polity, for the mere fact that they are unable to frame the uncommon system transition in the small republic. Furthermore, in spite of the abundant literature on Lebanon’s power-sharing, few studies detected structural factors accountable not only for the collapse of the consociational system in 1975 but also for the changing pre-war and post-war consociational trends in a comparative perspective. Thus, great controversy still hovers whether structural determinants related to the societal structure and to the circumstances of state formation, political leadership or exogenous factors can help explain Lebanon’s erratic power-sharing paterns.

Statement of the problem

Against the backdrop of regional and international disturbances, this book attempts to decode Lebanon’s singular democratic and power-sharing transition from 1943 up to 2006 by drawing upon the theories of consociational democracy and system transition. It proposes to integrate Lebanon’s system change into the

the Middle East: Experiences, Struggles, Challenges (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2003). 57 Whereas the number of democracies nearly became double since 1972, “the number in this region has registered an absolute decline.” See Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism,” 139. 58 It has even been noted that Middle Eastern cases have been conspicuously absent from “canonical books,” and “leading journals” on democratization. See Jason M. Brownlee, “Review Article: Low Tide after the Third Wave: Exploring Politics under Authoritarianism,” Comparative Politics (July 2002): 477-499, 478. See also Marsha Pripstein Posusney, “Enduring Authoritarianism: Middle East Lessons for Comparative Theory,” Comparative Politics 36 (2004): 127-138. It is only since September 11 and with the failings of democracy promotion in the region after the invasion of Iraq, and more recently with the exacerbation of conflicts in the Middle East, that a greater interest in studying the reasons behind the endurance and persistence of authoritarianism in the Arab world has been noted. For a comprehensive work on authoritarianism in the Middle East, see for example Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist, eds, Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Regimes and Resistance (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005). 28 Introductory Overview literature on transitology,59 and explains the contingencies of consociational engineering in the small republic by solving the uneasy relationship between elite voluntarism and deterministic factors in the Lebanese consociational case, and by delimiting structural conditions which shape its power-sharing parameters. It traces thus the principal exogenous and endogenous conditions that have impacted system dynamics, and answers the question whether a power- sharing democracy, whose fate is interwoven with the regional quagmire and whose fallacies are magnified by external cleavages, could ever function and sustain itself. Furthermore, the book portrays how trends of consociationalism as well as the interplay of democratic and authoritarian pressures impact the question of democratization in post-war Lebanon. In order to understand how Lebanon’s power-sharing democracy has fared and will fare, I developed a general analytical and structural framework appropriate to the Lebanese case. The overarching hypothesis is that Lebanon’s consociational democracy is stringently determined by constrictive variables, namely the institutional and democratic design of the system, the dynamics that shape elite coalescence, the communities’ identification with the power-sharing formula, and the regional impact on the formula. These contextually based conditions help measure the fluctuations of the model against specific yardsticks, and, in addition, improve the predictive potential of the consociational theory in relation to the Lebanese case.

Hypotheses and study structure

Divided into six chapters, the book is organized into two main parts revolving around pre- and post-war Lebanon. The two chapters which form the first part mainly deal with consociational democracy in general and the consociational model in pre-war Lebanon in particular. The first chapter highlights the distinctive features of consociational democracy and analyzes its major shortcomings. This background on consociational theory is essential for an assessment of the pre-war political system since it provides the main analytical framework upon which I build my hypotheses. Serving as a point of departure, the theoretical part enables me to compare and contrast the pre- and post-war systems as well as to evaluate the mutations of the Lebanese political regime.

59 See Chapter 3 on post-war Lebanon. Introductory Overview 29

The second chapter tackles the pre-war consociational model, the factors that led to its emergence, its strengths and defects, and finally the reasons for its collapse. This part is considered as the principal benchmark against which post- war power-sharing developments will be measured. The findings made at the end of the pre-war chapter concerning the collapse of the political system show that Lebanon’s consociational democracy is tied to restrictive conditions, more particularly elite accommodation, communal segmentation, and non-alignment in external conflicts. These conditions are necessary for the development and maintenance of the system. In the second part of the book, against the background of the transitologist literature, I examine Lebanon’s post-war political evolution up to 2006 by analyzing first the nature of the regime before the 2005 democratic Intifada, and then Lebanon’s transition to a ‘low-intensity’ consociational democracy after this turning point. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters adopt a comparative analysis which examine Lebanon’s double-edged democratic and power-sharing transitions. Thus, sections in these chapters are so organized that they enable me to contrast the favorable and unfavorable aspects of post-war developments. This approach, which has the disadvantage of dispersing chronological events, nonetheless avoids a passive approach to the matters discussed, and deals with various levels of analysis. In chapter 3, after a short theoretical overview on democratic transitions and hybrid regimes, I discuss the relevance of the theories on system transitions in the Lebanese case, and then I argue that Lebanon has not followed the regular path of democratization. Hence, before the 2005 political turnabout, post-war Lebanon was a semi-authoritarian regime with both democratic and autocratic features. To prove this statement, I separately analyze the intertwined autocratic and democratic components that make up the nature of this hybrid. In the second section of the chapter, I extrapolate from various case studies the salient authoritarian characteristics of the post-war hybrid regime and tackle the factors and mechanisms that made the emergence of such a system possible. In Chapter 4, the first section depicts the main democratic pressures that remained alive despite the emergence of semi-authoritarianism. It also sheds light on the 2000 transitory opening that took place in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon. This section also shows how the regional conjuncture overshadowed competitive pressures in the Lebanese system and in the Lebanese civil society. The second section of the chapter traces Lebanon’s unexpected political transition from a semi-authoritarian system with a competitive façade to a controversial ‘electoral democracy’ in the light of the 2005 ‘Democratic 30 Introductory Overview

Uprising.’ The underlying international and internal factors that led to such a transition as well as the various phases that paved the way for this transition are analyzed in detail. After closely assessing the emergent political scene, I argue why the precarious electoral democracy is acutely threatened by relapse. I allude mainly to the persistence of ‘points of authority’ which will undoubtely hinder a democratic transition. Since the identity of the Lebanese model does not only revolve around its authoritarian/democratic components, but also on its derailed power-sharing elements, I choose to analyze distinctly in Chapter 5 the power-sharing devices of post-war Lebanon. This chapter which is divided into four sections examines the disfigured consociational traits of the hybrid regime up to 2005, then the power-sharing renewal heralded by the 2005 Intifada. In the first section, I principally show how consociational devices up to 2005 were heavily impaired, as power-sharing has revolved within the closed orbit of semi-authoritarianism. The main deviancies of this “perverted consociational model”60 can be traced back to the development of adversarial and unrepresentative elite cartels and to a model of subjugated governance under Syrian hegemony. In this section, I show how during this phase, primordial consociational elements, mainly the wilful politics of accommodation, a multiple balance of power, and communal veto-powers, have been severely disrupted. In the second section, I analyze the nature of political cleavages which led to the rise of a bipolar model of power-sharing before Syrian withdrawal. Light is mainly shed on the deep disagreements between the loyalist and opposition camps on the Syrian role and on international assistance after the adoption of Resolution 1559. The third section which focuses on the consociational revival that accompanied Lebanon’s 2005 transition traces the reactivation of important power-sharing mechanisms. This part examines under which circumstances and to what extent consociationalism has been restored in the wake of Lebanon’s 2005 free polls. Its main finding is that under favorable conditions, communal and elite divisions can be harnessed in such a way that a more stable consociational entity might re-emerge. The fourth section deals with the incomplete aspects of Lebanon’s consociational transition since 2005 and confirms that the sustaining conditions for a power-sharing democracy, namely elite coalescence, communal

60 Christophe Dubois, La survie libanaise, ou, l’expérience de la différence: un nécessaire élan vers l'harmonie multiconfessionnelle (Bruxelles: P.I.E.-Lang, 2002), 141. Introductory Overview 31 segmentation and non-alignment, remain adversely affected by intrinsic and extrinsic variables. Hence, the 2005 power-sharing revival notwithstanding, Lebanon’s consociational model still suffers from worrisome flaws: unstable grand coalitions, a lame national consensus, political polarization, and an extremely high external load on the system. Although the section does not tackle in detail the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war, it alludes to its possible negative after- effects on Lebanon’s political configuration. The last part of this section draws attention to more intricate reservations about Lebanon’s consociationalism, particularly the danger behind encapsulating communal identities in confessional molds, Lebanon’s hazy confessional formula between change and perpetuity, and the inarticulate meaning of Lebanon’s Arabism. Although the study comes to the conclusion that a consociational democracy in a troubled environment is subject to deterministic conditions, the closing proposal devises a prescriptive model for the evolution of Lebanon’s consociational democracy into a more stable system. The proposal argues that it is possible to demagnify the influence of negative factors by synchronizing the democratic and consociational constituents of the system, by altering the institutional design, and by reinventing a new consociational identity based on the conciliation of cleavages as well as on the promotion of overarching loyalties. Contrary to regional analysts who advocate Lebanon’s immediate disengagement from regional turmoil, the conclusion proves that a positive non-alignment that does not backfire on the small republic could only take shape after the maturation of several consociational factors.

Long-term implications and contributions of the study

This study has both long-term theoretical as well as concrete implications. Its main achievement is that it establishes linkages between the theoretical constructs on consociationalism and transitology on the one hand and Lebanon’s transition on the other hand. By bridging the gap between the theory of power-sharing and the theory of system change in the Lebanese case, I drew attention to the necessity of addressing several theoretical aspects related to the configuration of power- sharing democracies which have not heretofore been tackled. On a broader scale, I attract attention to the necessity of spanning the gulf between a static consociational theory and a dynamic theory of regime trends so as to explain system evolution in consociations. 32 Introductory Overview

Moreover, I hope that I have contributed to developing insight on the variables and circumstances that make consociational democracies function survive or lose momentum in turbulent regions. In this regard, I drew attention to the necessity of detecting which sustaining conditions help fragmented societies maintain stability when the load on the system increases. On a more concrete level, studying the Lebanese case in relation to transitional politics and system transformation can be of great relevance to understanding the different trajectories that democracy travels in post-conflict and fragmented societies. Lebanon’s complex political journey inductively reveals that the transition paradigm is a largely fortuitous and non-linear process that cannot be restricted to a specific pattern or a series of causal chains but which develops its own peculiar trajectory in time and space. These political transformations that escape the constants of traditional transition theory leave enough room for scientific curiosity, and bring teleological claims in democratization theories into question. On the one hand, the lessons of Lebanon’s democratic transition within the framework of power-sharing could serve as a yardstick for other plural societies embarking on a post-conflict institutional and system reform. On the other hand, the Lebanese example, with its successes and shortcomings, is of primary importance to Arab societies that have embarked on some sort of liberalization or that might embark on a democratic trip after an eventual collapse of the regime. Although profound societal and cultural differences exist among Arab societies, the fact that the latter share many common points – such as their regional position in a turbulent environment, their propensity towards internal fragmentation, and their religious cleavages – could inspire possibilities for future research. It might be worthwhile, for example, embarking on a comparative study of whether power-sharing systems could possibly be the solution to a post-authoritarian Arab world. Such an analytical study would deal with possible democratic models for Arab societies against the backdrop of various consociational designs.

The method of research

The steps undertaken to address my hypotheses revolve first around a data analysis of primary and secondary literature on the theories of consociational democracy as well as system transitions. I have drawn insights and a dense research material mainly from the classical literature on consociationalism and democratization as well as from the most recent debates on unending democratic Introductory Overview 33 journeys, and on democracy assistance and promotion in the Middle East. This review has allowed me to determine a conceptual framework for Lebanon’s two- folded development: along the continuum of democratization and the continuum of consociationalism. To address the intricacies of my case study, I first selected the most prominent studies on pre-war Lebanon, and tried to synthesize important arguments concerning the system and its final collapse. At this stage, I established common links between my theoretical construct and the pre-war scene to derive some results regarding the sustainability of power-sharing democracy in Lebanon, and come up with a precise selection of the factors that were liable for its downfall. Assessing the evolution of post-war Lebanon was a more sophisticated process as I did not only concentrate on a review of a vast and complex literature but also on a daily analysis of the international as well as the Lebanese press especially after 2004 to determine the trends of democratic/authoritarian pressures and the evolvement of power-sharing tendencies and structures. This press analysis also encompassed key international and regional developments since 2001 and their repercussions on Lebanon’s communities and power- sharing system. In short, the analysis of the post-war system transition revolves notably around a descriptive account of the main political events enriched by a critical analysis against the backdrop of theoretical frameworks related to system transition and power-sharing.

Further methods of inquiry

In order to assess the increasingly complex situation since the adoption of Resolution 1559 in 2004, I have conducted expert interviews with Lebanese politicians from different communities and backgrounds, with Lebanese civil society activists as well as with international and Lebanese political scientists who have written much on Lebanon and on multi-confessional societies.61 These interviews, mostly audiotaped, were not conducted in order to reach specific empirical results but to gain insight into the politicians’ rhetoric, and to gain enriching perceptions on how Lebanese and Western experts conceive Lebanon’s power-sharing and system transition.

61 The names of interviewed Lebanese politicians and political scientists remain in this study anonymous so as to protect the privacy of individuals who do not wish to make some statements public because of the sensitive connotations these statements might call forth.