LEBANESE DEMOCRACY BATTERED, FLAWED, AND UNMATCHED IN THE ARAB WORLD WILLIAM HARRIS Lebanon Renaissance Foundation Lebanese Democracy: Battered, Flawed, and Unmatched in the Arab World 02 03 with multi-communal cohabitation, Some of the imperfections were not the predatory attentions of Arab AN unmatChed can show the Arab East a brighter absent from 20th-century Western regimes, and freewheeling Lebanese pLuRALiSt pEDigREE political future. If Lebanon’s post-2004 democracies. It is more important politics eased their penetration. After democratic revival founders because to remember that the confessional the June 1967 Israeli defeat and Lebanon’s pluralist politics and of continuing assault by the Syrian democracy of mid-20th century humiliation of the Arabs, political representative institutions, however autocracy, there will be little hope for independent Lebanon became the activation of the large Palestinian battered and flawed, have a historical democratization in the Arab Levant. bedrock of flourishing civil liberties, refugee population in Lebanon pedigree unmatched anywhere in vociferous political debate, successive interacted balefully with Lebanese the Middle East. They date back to parliamentary elections involving Muslim grievances about the Maronite the administrative council of the Lebanese genuine competition, and repeated advantage in Lebanon’s domestic autonomous Ottoman province of pLuralism and constitutional transfers of presidential affairs. The new Syrian Baathist Mount Lebanon, established in 1864 SOCiAL REALitY and government authority. After the regime, as it consolidated its power as an elected multi-sectarian advisory mid-1950s, the contrast with the in Damascus in the early 1970s under body for the provincial governor. In rest of the Arab world was like that Hafiz al-Assad, looked to command other words, Lebanon acquired a From the outset, Lebanon’s pluralist between day and night. its Lebanese flank against both proto-parliament decades before politics evolved to accommodate the Lebanon’s tolerance and openness, Israel and other Arabs. The modern the emergence of either Israel or pre-existing social reality of popular however, made Lebanese democracy Syrian state was not reconciled to the Turkish republic, and far in identification with various Muslim vulnerable to disruption, especially Lebanon’s existence, as indicated advance of the creation of modern and Christian sectarian communities, by Syrian refusal of diplomatic Arab states. When France and Britain each with its own leaders and relations between Damascus and cobbled together such entities as preoccupations. The communities Beirut. In the 1970s, a combination of Syria and Iraq in the 1920s, Mount crystallized in medieval times, Palestinian armed assertion, Israeli Lebanon already had half a century between the Islamic conquest of the military intrusion, Syrian interference, of experience of council elections and Levant in the 640s and the Ottoman conflicting Lebanese communal pluralist discourse. overthrow of the Egyptian Mamelukes responses, and Lebanese regime in 1517. It distorts history to represent incompetence brought large-scale Apart from Lebanon, the modern Lebanese sectarianism simply as a violence and degradation of the Arab world divides between two product of 19th-century European Lebanese state. almost equally dismal historical interventions. trajectories. In Syria, Iraq, Jordan, power structures by installing safety The eclipse of Lebanon’s confessional «We thougth of ways of salvaging the and Egypt, bourgeois political valves, not to move toward genuine Out of the late 19th-century Ottoman Lebanese situation. We had exerted political democracy, with no truly free competition flickered briefly in representative government. The post- autonomous province and French efforts; we had also earlier sent weapons and parliamentary elections between the ammunition, which were not in short supply the mid-20th century before the 2003 Iraqi experiment is different, but mandatory tutelage in the 1920s to begin with. We were left with the only last poll before the war years in 1972 curtain of autocracy descended. it took foreign invasion to uproot a and 1930s the modern Lebanese option of directly interfering in the conflict so and the first poll after the lifting of we ordered our troops to move in under the Elsewhere, in the Arabian Peninsula vicious dictatorship and the outcome state developed its eccentric banner of the Palestinian Liberation Army, a Syrian Baathist hegemony in 2005, and North Africa, new Arab states has been bloody fragmentation. confessional democracy, to balance fact which was unknown to all». lasted three decades. Fifteen years of proceeded without a break from the interests of the sectarian Hafez Al-Assad’s speech at the University of mayhem were succeeded in 1990 by Damascus July 20th 1976 Ottoman or European hegemony Only Lebanon, with a 144-year communities (“confessions”), fifteen years of subjection to Baathist to monarchical or republican representative tradition, has a serious mediated through their bourgeois Syria, one of the authors of Lebanon’s authoritarianism. From the 1980s, history of a parliamentary role in elites. The balance has been a from Lebanon’s unsympathetic wartime miseries. It is a tribute to the some Arab regimes implemented government, political pluralism, product of power relations and elite neighborhood. The country’s resilience of Lebanon’s deep pluralist limited political liberalization, with and public freedoms. Only Lebanon, manipulation, has never been fully geographical centrality in the traditions that a free press, a dynamic elections and political party activity, with its intellectual and commercial fair, and its operations ossified Middle East and its position on the civil society, and a functioning but the objective was to secure ferment and its long trial and error sectarian compartmentalization. Arab-Israeli front line attracted parliament survived the dark decades, Lebanon Renaissance Foundation Lebanese Democracy: Battered, Flawed, and Unmatched in the Arab World 04 05 to re-emerge in good order in the and poor accountability, but it is by allocations roughly aligned with Full elaboration of modern Lebanon’s obligation to fulfill the terms of the Greater Lebanon was intended to early 21st century. light years the most inclusive and population. This had antecedents confessional democracy took place mandate, a duality that gave rise to all be a viable territorial platform for a participatory political system in the stretching back to 1845 multi- between 1920 and 1943, under sorts of tensions. Maronite dominated state, but in fact After renewed independence in 2005, Arab world. Its resurgence since 2005 communal advisory councils for the French Mandatory rule. France, it established a political entity with no Lebanon remains what it was when does not deserve to be emasculated qa’im-maqams (administrators) which had long-standing special France contributed fundamental majority community. Mount Lebanon it initially gained its independence by the steady, cunningly modulated of Mount Lebanon. The style of relations with the Maronite Catholics elements to modern Lebanon. First, with Beirut could have become a in 1943: a multi-communal country attrition coordinated from Damascus representation after 1864 set the of Mount Lebanon, took advantage in September 1920, in coordination Maronite dominated state; Greater with no majority community in which against it. pattern for subsequent confessional of the Ottoman collapse in 1918 to with leading Maronites, France Lebanon could only function on the sectarian diversity colors national democracy. In functions, including a extract a mandate from the new enlarged the Ottoman province of basis of multi-communal pluralism, identity. Confessional democracy, veto power over tax increases, and League of Nations to control the Mount Lebanon into a “Greater with a tentative Maronite primacy. if adjusted periodically in line with FOuNdation of electoral arrangements, the council area of modern Lebanon and Syria, Lebanon” that pulled in the coastal The French adjusted to this reality demography, therefore continues to CONFESSiONAL of the autonomous province was theoretically to guide the local cities of Beirut, Tripoli, and Sidon, more quickly than the Maronites, and reflect the country’s social reality. democracy, qualitatively different from other sought to build the large Sunni and Whatever the faults of this framework, 1860-1943 Ottoman provincial councils. Shiite Muslim populations of the newly it allows popular participation incorporated districts into enlarged in politics and government in a Mount Lebanon’s formal autonomy The council advised the governor, a representative institutions. particularly complex corner of the within the Ottoman Empire, extracted Christian appointed from elsewhere Middle East. Confessional democracy by the European powers in the early in the empire, on the domestic affairs Second, France organized population can also be a way station, within which 1860s, was a bid to stabilize the rural of Mount Lebanon, the geographical counts, including a full-scale census the Lebanese become sufficiently hinterland of Beirut after almost core of modern Lebanon. A Christian in 1932. Multi-communal pluralism integrated to proceed to a non- two centuries of Maronite Catholic majority of seven out of 12 members could only operate in the context of communal framework. However, expansion, increasingly impinging reflected in