Ending the War? The Lebanese Broadcasting Act of 1994. DABBOUS-SENSENIG, Dima. Available from the Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/19525/ A Sheffield Hallam University thesis This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Please visit http://shura.shu.ac.uk/19525/ and http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html for further details about copyright and re-use permissions. Sheffield Hallam University Author: <DPtBfeoU5 -S £ ^ S £ U l Q ; Title: etO'DitOCj T tt£ Sheffield H? 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Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10694406 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Ending the War? The Lebanese Broadcasting Act of 1994 Dima Dabbous-Sensenig A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2003 COLDs^- £ s a l t e rl ABSTRACT Ending the War? The Lebanese Broadcasting Act of 1994 Soon after the end of the Civil War, Lebanon witnessed the birth of its first audio-visual law: the Broadcasting Act of 1994. This Act was, according to the Document of National Reconciliation that ushered in the end of the Civil War, considered to be crucial in ending civil strife in Lebanon. The 1994 Act was also the first legislation for private broadcasting to be passed in the Arab world. The introduction of the Act created great political upheaval. The present study documents the controversy created by the Act and seeks to understand the extent to which vehement criticism of the Act and of the government behind it were justified. I will seek to do so by examining the various phases of the Act: its inception as a draft; its final wording and the economic and political forces that shaped it; and its implementation, mainly through the creation of a new regulatory body, the National Audio-visual Council (or NAC) responsible for studying license applications. The present study will document the various stages of the new broadcasting law by relying almost exclusively on primary sources: i.e., archival material, most of which is inaccessible to the general public (e.g., application files); and personal interviews with high ranking government officials and media representatives. Finally, by relying on elite theory and an “evolutionary” theory of policy analysis, I will attempt to interpret the findings of the primary research, and to add to our understanding of media, law, and change in post-Civil War Lebanon. Acknowledgements I am indebted to many people who helped support, in one way or another, this work. My strongest feelings of gratitude go first to those closest to me who had to suffer with me the most. My beloved husband, without your ‘reign of terror’ I don’t think I would have finished my work in any foreseeable future. I am very happy I entrusted you with the task of ‘terrorising’ me into finishing. I owe you a lot. My beloved daughter Farah, thank you for your valuable help and companionship during those very long boring hours that we spent retrieving books and making photocopies in libraries. Please forgive me for all the time lost, and all the fun things we couldn’t do together during all those years. By your age standards, work on this dissertation must have felt like eternity, stretching over half of your existence on this earth. I promise I will make it up for you. My beloved Dad, I am forever indebted to you for having taught me, very early on, that when there is a will, there is a way. My loving Mom, you made sure I had everything I needed so that I could concentrate all my energy on my work. Your help and belief in me, all along, finally paid off. My brothers Ghassan and Wissam, my sisters-in-law Faten and Rania, my nephews and nieces, my friend Farid... please forgive me for not having been part of your lives the way I should have been in the last few years. Marina, I am especially remembering you, because you made my repeated stays in Sheffield feel like being home. You are so precious. On a more professional note, I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to my Director of Studies, Professor Sylvia Harvey. She was the best supervisor I could have had. Her expertise, meticulousness, and dedication contributed to this work in more ways than I can express. I would also like to extend my gratitude to my three examiners: Graham Murdock, Naomi Sakr, and David Waddington. As much as I hated having to work extra long hours in order to incorporate their comments into the final version of my dissertation, I recognise that the quality of this work would not have been the same without those comments. Special thanks also go to Fawaz Traboulsi, my ‘surrogate’ supervisor when I was in Lebanon. His work on the political economy of Lebanon was truly a mind-opener and an invaluable source of information for my study. There are many other people without whose generous help this dissertation would not have been written. To them, also, my warmest thanks. Last, and most particularly, I would like to thank my former professors Janet Hyde Clark and Bill Gilsdorf. You set the hoop very high. I love you for it. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 The controversial Broadcasting Act of 1994 1 Organisation of the study 6 CHAPTER ONE: POLICY ANALYSIS, COMMUNICATION, AND THE THIRD WORLD 9 Introduction 9 Defining public policy analysis 10 Policy analysts: Hired guns or handmaidens of democracy? 16 Limitations and ethnocentrism of research 18 “Indigenous” values 21 Research and democracy: “Speaking Truth to Power” 25 Research on societies in transition 27 What this research is (and is not) about 28 Problems of primary research in Lebanon 29 CHAPTER TWO: POLICY ANALYSIS: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY 34 The policy making process: major analytical tools 34 Policy determinants 36 Theories of policy analysis 39 1. Rational choice theory 40 2. The “stages” model 42 3. Incrementalism 43 4. Neo-institutionalism 45 5. Post-positivist or new policy analysis: ideas and arguments 48 6. Towards an “evolutionary” theory of policy analysis: Kingdon’s policy streams approach 50 Weaknesses of Kingdon’s model 53 Elites and elite power 55 The role of elite in the policymaking process 58 Stages of analysis and chapters breakdown 61 CHAPTER THREE: THE NATURE OF THE LEBANESE STATE, THE CULTURE OF CONFESSIONALISM 65 Introduction 65 The specificity of the Lebanese case 67 The Millet system 68 From “Millet” to “confession”: defining confessionalism 71 Conflict regulation in multi-communal states 72 Confessionalism in 20th century Lebanon 75 Lebanon and inter-communal strife 75 The question of legitimacy 77 The increasing confessional-ideological rift: Arabism vs. Lebanism 81 The rise (and fall?) of confessionalism 82 The French Mandate years and the instilling of political confessionalism 82 Consolidating the Lebanese confessional system: The National Pact 85 Breakdown of the “Lebanese model” and emergence of the Second Republic 89 Conclusion 92 ‘Invisible’ policy determinant? The role of Syria in Lebanese politics 94 CHAPTER FOUR: MEDIA INSTITUTIONS AND REGULATION IN LEBANON UP TO 1994 97 Introduction 97 Part One: Development of the Lebanese Press 97 Press laws in the Ottoman Empire 97 The press during the French mandate 100 The press between independence and 1975 101 Part Two: Development of radio and television 105 The broadcast media before the Civil War 105 Radio 105 Television 106 Broadcasting during the Civil War: “the war media phenomenon” 109 Regulating the “war media”: the “problem definition” stage of the 1994 Act 111 Conclusion 114 CHAPTER FIVE: THE POLICY FORMULATION AND ADOPTION PROCESSES OF THE 1994 ACT 116 Introduction 116 Part One: Policy formulation 118 Before the act: shaping forces 118 The draft bills 124 Amendments of the parliamentary joint committee: the compromise 128 Last amendments: voting for the bill in parliament 133 1. The Technical Committee 135 2. Regional broadcasting 135 Part Two: Policy adoption 137 Analysis of the text of the 1994 Act 137 Restrictions on ownership 139 1. Lebanese ownership 140 2. Concentration of ownership 142 3.