Master thesis POWER SHARING IN POST-CIVIL WAR LEBANON AN EVALUATION University: Leiden University Faculty: Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences Institute Institute of Political Science Course MSc Political Science: Conflict and Cooperation Student: T.P. Postmaa (s0951145) [email protected] Supervisor: Dr. M.S. Spirova Dr. J.G. Erk (co-reader) Date: 10 June 2014 This page intentionally left blank 2 “The people are all charming to me. They are not really Eastern, nor anything: just a poor fringe of a people between Islam and the sea, doomed to be paws in whatever politics are played here”1 1 Stark, Freya. 1942. Letters from Syria. London: John Murray. https://archive.org/stream/lettersfromsyria008101mbp#page/n79/mode/1up (accessed 09-06- 2014). 3 This page intentionally left blank 4 1 Table of Contents 2 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 6 3 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ...................................................................................................... 9 3.1 OTTOMAN RULE .............................................................................................................................. 9 3.2 THE FRENCH MANDATE ............................................................................................................... 10 3.3 THE NATIONAL PACT AND THE FIRST LEBANESE REPUBLIC .................................................... 12 3.4 THE CIVIL WAR AND THEREAFTER .............................................................................................. 14 4 THEORY .......................................................................................................................................... 17 4.1 THEORIES OF POWER SHARING .................................................................................................... 17 4.2 POSSIBLE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF POWER SHARING .................................................................... 21 5 METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................................... 24 5.1 METHOD ........................................................................................................................................ 24 5.2 VARIABLES ..................................................................................................................................... 24 5.3 OTHER FACTORS ........................................................................................................................... 26 5.4 DATA .............................................................................................................................................. 27 6 POWER SHARING IN POST-CIVIL WAR LEBANON ........................................................... 28 7 THE SYSTEM IN PRACTICE ....................................................................................................... 33 7.1 LEBANESE POLITICS DURING SYRIA’S PRESENCE (1992-2005) ............................................. 34 7.1.1 THE FIRST POST-WAR ELECTIONS ............................................................................................................ 34 7.1.2 THE 1996 AND 2000 ELECTIONS ............................................................................................................ 37 7.1.3 RISING TENSIONS .......................................................................................................................................... 39 7.1.4 ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................................................ 41 7.2 LEBANESE POLITICS AFTER SYRIA’S PRESENCE (2005- 2013) ............................................... 44 7.2.1 THE AFTERMATH OF THE HARIRI ASSASSINATION AND THE 2005 ELECTIONS ............................ 44 7.2.2 POLITICAL DEADLOCK AND THE 2009 ELECTIONS ............................................................................... 46 7.2.3 ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................................................ 49 8 MODERATION IN POST-CIVIL WAR LEBANON ................................................................. 52 8.1 THE MODERATION OF HEZBOLLAH ............................................................................................. 52 8.2 PUBLIC ATTITUDES ....................................................................................................................... 55 8.3 ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................................................... 58 9 DOMESTIC PEACE IN POST-CIVIL WAR LEBANON .......................................................... 61 9.1 DOMESTIC PEACE DURING SYRIA’S PRESENCE (1992-2005) ................................................. 61 9.2 DOMESTIC PEACE AFTER SYRIA’S WITHDRAWAL (2005-2011) ........................................... 64 9.3 ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................................................... 70 10 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 72 11 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................................ 76 11.1 APPENDIX 1: THE MUTASARRIFIYA AND GREATER LEBANON .............................................. 76 11.2 APPENDIX 2: GENERAL MAP OF MODERN LEBANON ............................................................... 77 11.3 APPENDIX 3: CONFESSIONAL MAP OF LEBANON ..................................................................... 78 12 SOURCES ...................................................................................................................................... 79 5 2 INTRODUCTION When thinking of Lebanon, one of the first things that come up is it highly diverse society. Today Lebanon harbours people from a wide range of different religious denominations – seventeen officially recognised religious sects –, predominantly Muslim and Christian (CIA 2012). This characteristic makes successful governance a true challenge. The area that later became modern Lebanon has been ruled by foreign powers since 1516, when the Ottoman Sultan Selim I conquered the land, until 22 November 1943, the day the French recognised the independence of Lebanon. The Ottomans handled the problem of the different religious denominations using the so-called millet-system that gave significant autonomy to the different religious sects (Traboulsi 2012: 3-4; Goldschmidt and Davidson 2010: 139-140). During the French Mandate (1920-1943), the French distributed government and administrative posts fairly over the various religious sects (Traboulsi 2012: 90). In 1943, the leaders of the various religious sects came together and reached an unwritten agreement better known as the National Pact of 1943. The agreement provided for a power-sharing system aiming for a stable independent Lebanon (Traboulsi 2012: 107). With its difficulties, the system established in 1943 lasted for more than 30 years until 1975, when the first power sharing system of the Lebanese Republic officially ended with the start of the civil war. In October 1989, the Lebanese Parliamentarians of the pre-civil war system came together in Ta’if, Saudi Arabia, to end the civil war. The result of the negotiations was the Document of National Accord, better known as the Ta’if Accord. The document formed the basis for a revised political system based on the power- sharing system existing before the civil war (Cleveland and Bunton 2013: 500- 501). Similar to the pre-civil war system, is the current post war-system based on the political power-sharing construction known as consociationalism, of which Arend Lijphart is the foremost proponent (Norris 2008: 24). The system that was agreed upon in Ta’if, Saudi Arabia, was supposed to be an upgraded model of its 6 predecessor, the post-1943 model. The question however arises whether the ‘upgraded’ post-Ta’if system achieved its goals, where its predecessor failed. The focus in this research will be on the results of the consociational power sharing system. This thesis poses the following question: To what extent is the power sharing-system in post-civil war Lebanon a success? Here, I will not determine ‘success’ in terms of whether the post-civil war system achieved the status of a ‘stable democracy’ as Lijphart argues (1977: 1). Instead, the focus here, in the case of a country torn apart by 15 years of internal sectarian- conflict, will be on a more pragmatic and realistic form of ‘success’. The degree of ‘success’ in this research relates to the following two sub-questions: 1) to what extent has the post-civil war power-sharing system had a moderating effect on political actors and the Lebanese public? and: 2) to what extent has the post-civil war power-sharing system achieved domestic peace. I have chosen these sub- questions because they capture two stages of the process power-sharing model is believed to spark. The first sub-question captures the perceived direct effect of the power-sharing model, whereas the second sub-question captures the last part of the process, in which the power-sharing model is believed to lead to domestic peace and stability. Lebanon before the civil war was one