Pax Syriana: Elite Politics in Postwar Lebanon

The Lebanese Political System

1 The Lebanese Political System The Elite Pacts of 1943 and 1989 Arend Lijphart, focusing on the period between 1943 and 1975, has described this relatively stable time in Lebanese history as a successful “consociational” democracy.1 Consociationalism refers to a political situation in which a variety of groups, none of which are large enough to constitute a majority, are able to achieve social stability by means of a pact among the elites of the various groups. In the application of this term as developed by Lijphart, elites from the various factions negotiate powersharing arrangements among themselves and thereby regulate political life in a divided society. Lijphart’s analysis of the First Lebanese Republic is also applicable to the country’s situation in more recent years. In order to put an end to the country’s civil war in 1989, the ruling elites in Lebanon once again united around issues of shared strategic interest, such as the presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon, which all elite factions supported as an aid to peace and stability—at least until the Cedar Revolution of 2005. In response to the chaos and destruction of the civil war, the various Lebanese elites came to share an acute fear of a disintegration of the system and the return of anarchy. In the postwar period, therefore, they largely agreed to postpone their differences in order to promote stability. Lijphart and others have suggested that Lebanon became a “consociational democracy” after its independence in 1943. Looking at the postwar years of Syrian hegemony (1989–2005), I am forced to agree with Tamirace Fakhoury-Muehlbacher in saying that although this political system had consociational features, it cannot fully be considered a consociational democracy.2 Indeed, the same power-sharing arrangements that 2  Pax Syriana made stability possible in an ethnically and culturally fragmented nation have also tended to impair the full development of democracy.3 I will argue that the transition to democracy was thwarted by the nature of this political system, in which elites simply reorganized their power-sharing arrangements after each political upheaval, and also by the tendency of the consociational arrangements to rely on the stabilizing influence of external powers. Marie-Joëlle Zahar has noted that “Lebanon’s experiment with power sharing dates back to 1861” (the end of the sectarian war in Mount Lebanon between Druze and Maronites) and that “power sharing has brought long periods of peace, but this has depended on external protectors.”4 In the nineteenth century, the protector of the peace was the Ottoman Empire; through the early twentieth century, the role was played by France. My view is that the authoritarian regime in Syria came to be a similar arbiter of the peace between the end of the civil war in 1989 and the Cedar Revolution of 2005. Because Lebanon’s power-sharing institutions have relied on external proctors, they have consistently thwarted the country’s transition to democracy. Lebanese elites renegotiated the terms of their power-sharing agreements after each civil war; however, each renegotiated settlement was only slightly different from the preceding one. In this chapter I explain the two primary power-sharing agreements established by Lebanese elites since the nation’s independence: the National Pact of 1943 and the Ta’if Agreement of 1989. Each of these pacts led to an associated period of stability—the First and Second Lebanese Republics. I also address the issue of democracy in these republics and explain the role that Syria played as guarantor of the Ta’if Agreement in the Second Republic. The Political System and the First Republic Consociational Democracy Writing in the late 1960s, Lijphart defined consociational political systems as “government by elite cartel designed to turn a democracy with The Lebanese Political System  3 a fragmented political culture into a stable democracy.”5 He identified four primary characteristics of such systems: the government is composed of a coalition of leaders that represent the various factions of the plural society, these leaders have a mutual veto over the other leaders’ decisions, political factions are represented proportionally, and each political faction retains a high degree of autonomy.6 Lijphart identified the First Lebanese Republic as a clear example of “consociational democracy” and argued that it was a successful system: “On the whole, consociational democracy in Lebanon must be judged to have performed satisfactorily for more than thirty years. Its main weakness was the inflexible institutionalization...