Pax Syriana: Elite Politics in Postwar Lebanon

Conclusion

214 Conclusion The Lebanese civil war led to a renewal and realignment of the Lebanese political elite. Today, that elite is composed of a group of state actors who emerged during the war and consolidated power after the Ta’if Agreement and a strategic elite composed of unelected individuals who influence political debate and help set the national agenda. The appointments to the parliament that followed the Ta’if Agreement in 1991 and the legislative elections of 1992 allowed for the enlargement of the state elite, as the number of parliamentarians was increased to 128. Despite the new institutions created by the Ta’if Agreement and the modification of the power-sharing formula that occurred during this elite settlement, the change of personnel and shifting alliances during the postwar years did not substantially alter elite behavior and attitudes. The underlying cause of this lack of change can be attributed to the continuation of the confessional system and to Syria’s opportunistic interference in Lebanon ’s political affairs. Both of these factors helped to create stability in Lebanon, but at the cost of prospects for any deep-seated change in the country’s political culture. In its composition, the postwar state elite included wealthy businessmen , notables, technocrats, and clients of Syria. The notables, especially those individuals belonging to the Christian community, were originally sidelined after the Ta’if Agreement, but most of these leaders were gradually integrated into the state over the following decade. The postwar strategic elite included religious leaders, influential journalists, and military commanders. Some of these members of the strategic elite made a transition toward becoming more involved in the state in the years after the civil war. A void at the leadership level allowed for greater participation Conclusion  215 of certain religious leaders and military commanders in the political life of the Second Republic. Although there was a significant circulation of individual elite actors at the end of the civil war, as well as a realignment of the terms of the power-sharing arrangement among the different confessional factions, the same basic form of clientelistic elite recruitment and patronage that had existed before the war continued unabated. If anything, the negative aspects of this personalized system of elite recruitment were exacerbated as the increasing financialization of elite networks led to pervasive corruption and the misappropriation of public funds. Aspiring Elites and Patronage Postwar clientelistic practices were not radically different from those practices studied by Michael Johnson in his analysis of Sunni elites in Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s.1 Johnson notes that in prewar Lebanon, the control of patronage networks was one of the most important assets of a sectarian leader, or za‘im.2 He also maintains that the clientelistic system collapsed at the beginning of the war, only to reappear in a different format in a fragmented country.3 On the basis of my research, it seems clear that these same patterns of clientelism are still prevalent in the postwar era and that they act to the detriment of the inclusion of new forms of political power. Certain groups, such as women, are virtually locked out of the political elite because of these features of the political culture, and the inertia of clientelistic networks is a prohibitive barrier against the modernization and deconfessionalization of the Lebanese system. Political parties in Lebanon are weak and are not in themselves a reliable basis for elite recruitment or formation, so today’s aspiring Lebanese elites still emerge on the political scene almost exclusively through a patronage relationship with an important political leader, generally the leader of the sectarian community to whom the emerging elite belongs. I identified seven different ideals among types of emerging elites: the civil society activist, the technocrat, the academic, the local representative, the heir, the Hezbollahi, and the nationalist militant; however, out of all these groups, only the heir appears to have a solid hope of entering the upper echelons of Lebanese political life. The other emerging elites 216  Pax Syriana who rely on clientelism to usher them onto the political scene are likely, at most, to remain indefinitely in the status of client while almost never reaching patronhood. The only type of emerging elite who does not use clientelism as a primary political strategy is the Hezbollahi, as he is a part of an organization that seems prima facie to adhere more closely to the trappings of democracy than does...