Power Sharing in Lebanon

Consociationalism Since 1820

Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429827051
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book studies the origins and evolution of power sharing in Lebanon. The author has established a relationship between mobilization, ethnurgy (ethnic identification), memory and trauma, and how they impact power sharing provisions.

The book starts with the events in the 1820s, when communities began to politicize their identities, and which led to the first major outbreak of civil violence between the Druze and the Maronites. Consequently, these troubled four decades in Lebanon led to the introduction of various forms of power-sharing arrangements to establish peace. The political systems introduced in Lebanon are: the Kaim-Makamiya (dual sub-governorship), a quasi-federal arrangement; the Mutassarifiya, the prototype of a power-sharing system; the post-independence political system of Lebanon which the book refers to as semi-consociation, due to the concentration of executive powers in the Presidential office; and finally, the full consociation of the Taif Republic. In each of these phases, there was a peculiar interaction between the non-structural elements that had a direct impact on power sharing; this led at times to instability, and at other times it brought down the system, as in 1840–1860 and 1975.

Power Sharing in Lebanon is the first academic work that emphasizes the influence of the non-structural elements that hinder power sharing. This volume is now a key resource for students and academics interested in Lebanese Politics and the Middle East.

1 Introduction

Consociationalism is the theory of power sharing within political systems introduced in deeply divided societies and aimed at ending civil wars (Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina) and/or achieving stability (Belgium, Austria 1945–1966, the Netherlands 1917–1976). Deeply divided societies are characterized by segmental cleavages of a religious, ideological, linguistic, regional, cultural, or ethnic nature.¹ These cleavages make it impossible to apply simple majoritarian democracy where the majority rules and the minority becomes loyal opposition. Hence, consociationalism introduces the concept of continuous power sharing between different groups to bring them together in order to achieve stability and govern the country.

Arend Lijphart is the father of consociationalism who conceptualized the theory according to four factors: grand coalition, mutual veto, proportionality and segmental autonomy.² One of the countries that Lijphart included in the study of consociationalism is Lebanon, which is deeply divided according to religious identification. All the communities in Lebanon are minorities, so power sharing is crucial in governing the country. However, Lebanon has suffered from political instability and occasional rounds of violence, which has prompted researchers to look at the sources of instability in Lebanon.

Aim of the book

My aim is to extend the conceptual thinking about consociationalism as a framework for fair pluralism in divided societies, using Lebanon as a platform for developing further the consociational theory as discussed by Lijphart, O’Leary and McGarry. Hence, I intend to demonstrate that consociational democracy is the only political system viable for a deeply divided society like Lebanon. Consociational practices based on power sharing prevent the system breaking down. When consociational practices are applied, the system remains intact. Events in 1860, 1958 and 2008 are examples of consociationalism achieving a peaceful settlement in Lebanon based on power-sharing arrangements. When elites deviate from consociational practices, the country suffers from civil strife, and the events of 1840, 1975 and 2006–2008 represent different phases of system breakdown that did not come to an end except by applying or modifying pre-existing forms of consociational provisions.

I also intend to demonstrate that consociational practices in Lebanon are hampered by three main characteristics of the country: ethnurgy (the politicization of cultural identities), mobilization, and memory and trauma. Ethnurgy in deeply divided societies requires the introduction of accommodative practices represented in a consociational political system to provide stability and prevent civil unrest. The politicization of cultural identities began in 1825, when the crisis between Bashir Shihab and Bashir Joumblatt produced political communities (Druze and Maronites), identified by religious affiliation within one political landscape (Mount Lebanon). Consequently, cultural identification became a leading characteristic of Lebanese politics, (considering that other communities – Sunni, Shiite, Armenians – also became political groups after the creation of independent Lebanon), and this required consociational practices to channel the demands of political groups and accommodate their politicized identities.

At some points, when communal elites may not be satisfied with the power-sharing arrangements, they tend to mobilize their groups in order to press demands for a rearrangement of consociational provisions. The process of mobilization has two effects: first, it strengthens identification with a group because cultural cohesion becomes a requirement for solidarity; second, it threatens peaceful coexistence because mobilized communities may become hard to control. When communities are mobilized, one unfortunate event may lead to civil unrest that will eventually break down the system, and only proper consociational provisions can ease tensions and de-mobilize communities. Moreover, when communities are mobilized, leaders tend to stick to radical political stances and may be wary of compromises, which cripples the system and stagnates consociational arrangements. Thus, I identify the second characteristic of consociational politics in Lebanon, and that is communal mobilization.

Consociationalism channels the demands and competition of political communities within a framework of bargain and compromise. The politicization of these communities in a specific landscape that witnesses recurrent forms of mobilization and communal violence results in the creation of memory and trauma. As a result, memory and trauma become tools that solidify cultural identification, facilitate communal mobilization, and are hidden factors in moulding a consociational political system by requiring that the system respects the memory and trauma of each community. In cases where consociational provisions are not comprehensive and do not answer the grievances of communities, these grievances might find their way to a community’s memory that will be used as a source of mobilization, a feature of capitalizing on the differences between political communities, and will eventually threaten whatever power-sharing arrangement is present. Therefore, I identify the third characteristic of Lebanese politics as the role of memory and trauma.

The contribution of this work is twofold: theoretical, related to consociationalism, and empirical, related to the case study of Lebanon. At the theoretical level, there has been a recent trend in the literature emphasizing exogenous factors that promote stability in consociational systems, (advocated by Brendan O’Leary, John McGarry, Michael Kerr). I am more inclined to rely on internal factors that promote or hinder consociational arrangements, without negating the role of exogenous factors in this process. However, my emphasis is on these internal factors represented in the form of characteristics of deeply divided societies and their relation with consociationalism, and as I will show, these factors outweigh the role of external ones. Moreover, this research is the first that identifies memory and trauma as a factor in promoting or hindering consociational provisions. It is critical for consociational theorists to look at this element in studying power-sharing arrangements, since in most cases these deeply divided societies have suffered from communal violence that generates traumatic memories. A legitimate consociational system needs to respect and manage not only the conflicting identities, but also the traumatic memories of groups in order to establish a stable system and avoid the possible emergence of emotional-motivated memories that would threaten peace and coexistence.

Regarding the empirical contribution, I argue that the political system in Lebanon between 1840 and 1860 was similar to a federal system, something that has not been looked at by other researchers, and the fact that communal violence erupted in 1860 signalled the failure of such a system in Lebanon, a lesson that politicians in post-independence Lebanon did not grasp from history. On the contrary, that the power sharing arrangements of 1861 lasted until World War I reflects the success of such a system and influenced the making of a balanced system in modern Lebanon. Another empirical contribution is that the civil war occurred in Lebanon because the system was semi-consociational; that is, it had elements of a power-sharing democracy but was not a full consociation. In essence, this was because of the concentration of executive power with the Presidential office, occupied with the agreement of all parties by a Maronite, and the rejection by the dominant Maronite politicians on sharing some of the powers of the President with the Parliament, like his exclusive right to name the Prime Minister. Finally, regarding today’s Lebanon, it is important to note that this research explicitly argues that Lebanon is surviving the regional turmoil because of proper consocitional arrangements represented in the Taif Accord. Hence, I answer the critics of Lebanon’s corporate consociational system (who happen to be many), simply by arguing that if the system were not successful, then the system would have fallen instantly after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Historical background

Lebanon’s uniqueness is in the coexistence of different cultural groups in a region that is not tolerant of diversity. That is the reason why Pope John Paul II referred to Lebanon in an official visit in 1997 as a “message” for coexistence. While studying Lebanon, a researcher should keep in mind that this country happens to exist in a region that is not open to pluralism, diversity and multi-culturalism. Israel is an example of a state where a dominant group (the Jews) continues to subordinate the minority (the Arab Palestinian population) and with some measures aimed at uprooting the Arabs from Israel to establish a pure Jewish state. In the Persian Gulf, there is limited freedom of expression of both religious and political views: Iran continues to persecute the Baha’is (a non-Muslim community established in the nineteenth century); it limits the freedom of religious expression of the Sunni population, and restricts the practices of the Zoroastrians in the country. The countries of the Arab peninsula are very conservative monarchies and they allow only a limited sphere of political and religious expressions. In Turkey, the state has continued to deny cultural and linguistic rights to the Kurdish and Alevi communities. In this regional context, only Lebanon has managed to survive as a diverse and plural society, unique in its own democratic political system and diverse social fabric.

Lebanon has a peculiar history. It has been part of great empires – the Phoenician, Greek, Persian, Roman, and Islamic empires – and played a role in the cultural and political rise of those empires. Lebanon was the home of the first alphabet, and written scriptures created by Phoenicians. The city of Tyre in southern Lebanon is known for its resistance to Alexander the Great, making it the first city to resist a mighty army (Tyre also proved to be a stronghold for resisting Israeli occupation in the 1980s and 1990s). The Romans built the first law university in Beirut centuries before other parts of the world were introduced to legal studies. As for the Islamic empires, Lebanon was the first line of defense against the Crusaders.

The first independent Lebanese political entity was established during the era of Druze Prince Fakhredin al-Maʻni II, in the late sixteenth century. Fakhredin succeeded in promoting the Emirate of Lebanon (greater than today’s Lebanon) independent of the Ottoman Empire, with diplomatic representation in different European principalities. That did not last for long as the Ottomans crushed Fakhredin’s emirate in the seventeenth century, and Lebanon became a coalition of princes who came together to govern small parts of the Lebanese emirate. The Druze community preserved their eminence within Lebanon until the Maronites challenged them in the nineteenth century. In 1825, Maronite Prince Bashir Shihab II eliminated his Druze rival Sheikh Bashir Joumblatt, establishing a Maronite hegemony for the first time in the history of Lebanon. That year also marked the first inter-communal violence and competition over political domination.

In 1840 and 1860, the Druze and Maronites fought again for political supremacy in the Mountain. The outcome of violence in 1840 was a political system based of the two sub-governorates, or the Kaim-makamiya, of Mount Lebanon, a system similar to federalism, where the northern part of the Mountain was ruled by a Christian Prince and the southern part by a Druze prince. Nevertheless, the system could not provide peaceful coexistence between the two communities and violence broke out once more in 1860. The outcome of violence in 1860 was a political system based on communal identification which became the peculiar characteristic of Lebanese politics. I believe that the system created in 1860, called the Mutassarifiya, provided a genesis for identity-based politics and the consociational arrangements of modern Lebanon, where proportionality was applied in the governing body of the Mountain, called the Administrative Council, headed by a Christian Ottoman.

The Mutassarifiya was a prototype of consociational arrangements for modern Lebanon. During the French Mandate (1918–1943), the system created was an expansion of the Mutassarifiya into a fully-fledged democracy, with some elements of consociationalism like proportionality and cultural autonomy. However, the argument in this book is that Lebanon cannot be said to have been a full consociation from 1943 to 1975, when the civil war broke out. The very fact that executive powers were entrenched in the Presidency, which was agreed to be a Maronite position, meant that other communities had a subordinate political position, and hence there was a need to promote the system from a semi-consociation to a full one.

In 1989, the Lebanese parliament under Saudi, American and Syrian auspices agreed on a plan to reform the Lebanese system and end the civil war. This reform was known as the Taif Accord (after the agreement took place in the city of Taif, Saudi Arabia), accepted by the elites (except for General Michel Aoun) and promoted the system into a full consociation. The consociational arrangements introduced by the Taif Accord provided a mechanism for the Lebanese elite to avoid open warfare, promote a more balanced representation and foster cooperation between cultural groups. The worst disruption was the conflict of May 2008, when Hezbollah controlled West Beirut and attempted to take direct control of the Mountain. The security breakdown forced elites to compromise in an attempt to avoid civil war. I intend to show that the consociational arrangements of the Taif Accord provide elites with incentives to avoid open warfare, hence promoting peace, with the only problem being that sometimes elites tend to over-use veto powers to press forward their demands before agreeing on a compromise.

Chapters of the book

Chapter 2 deals with the theoretical framework of the book. The theory of consociationalism will be reviewed to understand how this type of political system functions and what is expected from elites. I will also provide a theoretical framework for the characteristics of Lebanon, which are cultural identification, communal mobilization, and memory and trauma. In this chapter, the reader will become familiar with the argument that consociationalism manages the deep segmentation in a country divided according to religious lines, and identities provide a catalyst for mobilization at the time of grievances, which mostly threatens coexistence in the system. In such cases, communal memory and trauma may be exploited by elites to radicalize communities or to remind group members that it is better to reach a compromise than to re-live again the miseries of civil war.

The third chapter opens the empirical analysis with analysis of the era between 1820 and 1860. The implementation of a federal solution to the Lebanese crisis, the Kaim-makamiya system of a Druze and Maronite prince governing southern and northern Mount Lebanon respectively failed, since violence broke out in 1860, while the application of a unified entity based on power sharing arrangements provided peaceful coexistence. This era witnessed a high level of mobilization that was needed to fuel the civil strife, something that became the bedrock of communal memory and trauma.

Chapter 4 will cover the years 1860 to 1943, and will introduce the reader to the Lebanism–Arabism debate and the formal institutionalization of consociationalism in the Lebanese republic as highlighted in the constitution. The cultural debate about Lebanon’s identity became one main form of ethnurgy which fueled the Lebanese civil war in 1975. I consider the Lebanese model created in the 1926 constitution a semi-consociational arrangement because it gave excessive executive powers to the President. Moreover, politicians failed to agree on a unified Lebanese identity, and the definition of what a Lebanese is became a contested sphere between a pro-Arab Muslim definition and a pro-Phoenician Christian one. Some Maronites perceived themselves as distinct from the Arab-Muslim world and theorized about a Maronite-Lebanese nationalism which they believed was a continuation of the Phoenicians. On the other hand, the majority of Muslim intellectuals along with a handful of Christians argued that Lebanon was an indispensable part of the Arab world. The argument about Lebanon’s identity was resurrected in the twentieth century, especially during the Lebanese civil war.

In Chapter 5 I cover the events between 1943 and 1975. In those decades, Lebanon witnessed important changes. First, it established itself as the only democratic system in the Arab Middle East and built its institutions accordingly. Nevertheless, elites failed to promote the system into a full-consociational one, and the system broke up under the pressure of mobilization and unrest. Mobilization at this stage was at its peak especially in the late 1960s, which sheds light to the role of mobilization and a stable consociational system.

Chapter 6 deals with the Lebanese civil war from 1975 to 1991. War memories and traumas of 1841 and 1860 resurfaced and the Druze–Maronite rivalry and grievances had a tremendous effect in catalyzing the brutality of the civil war. Each communal group built its own institutions which aimed for the well-being of the group. Sectarianism was territorialized: Christians started to form compact territorial regions of their own by excluding the Muslims, and the Muslims in t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Consociationalism, ethnurgy, mobilization, memory and trauma
• 3 The roots of consociationalism and violence in Lebanon: 1820–1914
• 4 Greater Lebanon, consociationalism and the cultural debate: 1900–1943
• 5 The rise and fall of Lebanese semi-consociationalism: 1943–1975
• 6 The long road to consociationalism: 1975–1991
• 7 Consociational practices in Lebanon: 1991–2015
• 8 Conclusion: what can we learn from Lebanon?
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index