The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon: Sectarian Governance in Postwar Lebanon - Softcover

Salloukh, Bassel F; Barakat, Rabie; Al-Habbal, Jinan S; Khattab, Lara. W; Mikaelian, Shoghig

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074533413X ISBN 13: 9780745334134

Verlag: Pluto Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

The wave of popular uprisings that swept across the Arab world starting in December 2010 rattled regimes from Morocco to Oman. However, Lebanon’s sectarian system proved immune to the domestic and regional pressures unleashed by the Arab Spring. How can this be explained? How has the country’s political elite dealt with challenges to the system? And, finally, what lessons can other Arab states draw from Lebanon’s sectarian experience? Using extensive field work, The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon looks at the mix of institutional, clientelist, and discursive practices that sustain the sectarian nature of Lebanon. The book exposes snapshots of an ever-expanding sectarian web that occupies substantial areas of everyday Lebanese life. It also surveys struggles waged by opponents of the system – by women, teachers, public sector employees, students or coalitions across NGOs – and how their efforts are often sabotaged or contained by various systematic forces.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bassel F. Salloukh is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Lebanese American University. He is author, co-author, and co-editor of a number of books including Beyond the Arab Spring (Lynne Rienner Firm, 2012) and The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon (Pluto, 2015). Rabie Barakat is Lecturer in Media Studies in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a former news presenter and field reporter in different Arab news outlets and co-author of The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon (Pluto, 2015). Jinan S. Al-Habbal is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. She is the co-author of The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon (Pluto, 2015). Lara W. Khattab is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She is the co-author of The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon (Pluto, 2015). Shoghig Mikaelian is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She is the co-author of The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon (Pluto, 2015).

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The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon

By Bassel F. Salloukh, Rabie Barakat, Jinan S. Al-Habbal, Lara W. Khattab, Shoghig Mikaelian

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2015 Bassel F. Salloukh, Rabie Barakat, Jinan S. Al-Habbal, Lara W. Khattab, and Shoghig Mikaelian, and Aram Nerguizian
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-3413-4

Contents

Preface, viii, 
1. Introduction, 1, 
2. A Political History of Sectarian Institutions, 12, 
3. Institutions, Sectarian Populism, and the Production of Docile Subjects, 32, 
4. Neoliberal Sectarianism and Associational Life, 52, 
5. Sectarianism and Struggles for Socio-economic Rights, 70, 
6. Elections, Electoral Laws, and Sectarianism, 88, 
7. Between Sectarianism and Military Development: The Paradox of the Lebanese Armed Forces, 108, 
8. The Postwar Mediascape and Sectarian Demonizing, 136, 
9. Overlapping Domestic/Geopolitical Contests, Hizbullah, and Sectarianism, 155, 
10. Conclusion, 174, 
Notes, 184, 
Index, 220, 

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The wave of popular uprisings that swept across the Arab world starting in December 2010 left no Arab state unscathed. The deafening anthem leading these uprisings, "Al-shab yurid isqat al-nizam" (people want to overthrow the regime), rattled authoritarian regimes from Morocco to Oman. Prospects for those long-anticipated democratic transitions seemed bright in the immediate aftermath of authoritarian regime collapse in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Soon enough, however, what had commenced as genuinely peaceful uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria mutated into regime-manufactured sectarian or tribal contests. Authoritarian regimes deployed sectarian conflicts at home or aboard either to insulate themselves from domestic pressures, militarize otherwise peaceful uprisings, or, alternatively, advance their geopolitical objectives. Nowhere was this overlapping use of sectarianism more striking than in Syria. An authoritarian regime sectarianized what had commenced as a national and peaceful popular uprising, while an external actor, Saudi Arabia, deployed sectarianism to topple the Syrian regime as part of a realist strategy aimed at compensating for Riyadh's geopolitical losses in Iraq after the 2003 USA invasion. Tehran also used sectarian symbolism to rally Shi'a fighters from across the Arab world in defense of its Syrian bridgehead into the Arab world and its larger geopolitical interests.

Paradoxically, however, the explosion of sectarianism in the Arab world after the popular uprisings underscores the malleability of sectarian identities and modes of political mobilization. Far from being immutable and ahistorical essences, sectarian identities, like other vertical cleavages, are historical constructions; their intensity and centrality to modes of political mobilization is based on specific political, ideological, and geopolitical contexts. Domestic and regional dynamics in the Arab world have not always been driven by sectarian calculations; nor has sectarianism been the most important marker of political identities and group mobilization. Sectarian cleavages overlapped or cross-cut with other cleavages throughout the process of state formation; their primacy and intensity in a number of Arab states was a result of authoritarian regime strategies. Moreover, sectarian modes of political mobilization thrive on state weakness and ideological vacuums. The lesson of the hitherto short history of the Arab states system is unequivocal in this respect: the salience of sectarian, tribal, ethnic, regional, or any other vertical or sub-national identity rises as the ideological and material power of the state declines. Across the Arab world, dormant sectarian, tribal, religious, or ethnic affiliations flared up because of state collapse caused by the 2003 USA invasion of Iraq and, later, the militarization and sectarianization of the Arab uprisings.

Lebanon is quintessential in this respect. Since independence, sectarianism was institutionalized in the form of multiple corporate consociational power-sharing arrangements, namely the 1943 National Pact and the 1989 Ta'if Accord, in the context of a centralized but institutionally weak state. Control of state institutions and revenues by an overlapping alliance of sectarian/political and economic elite consecrates a sectarian institutional set-up and lubricates sophisticated clientelist networks that co-opt large segments of the population, thus ensuring that the Lebanese remain unequal sectarian subjects compartmentalized in self-managed communities, rather than citizens with inalienable rights. The closer integration between the country's sectarian/political and economic elite in the postwar period placed the state's fiscal policies at the service of their class interests. This has created a vicious political economic circle whereby sectarian elite control of state institutions and resources produces the kind of socioeconomic policies that serve the material interests of an increasingly tightly integrated and overlapping sectarian/political and economic postwar elite which, in turn, provides them with the material and clientelist wherewithal to reproduce sectarian identities and modes of political mobilization. The relationship between sectarianism and class relations in both pre-war and postwar Lebanon is thus reciprocal rather than linear. Suad Joseph long ago noted how "the barriers of class and sect were inextricably linked" in Lebanon, and how sectarian cleavages tend to uphold the class structure. Similarly, Fawwaz Traboulsi contends that sects serve as "enlarged clientelist networks designed to resist the inequalities of the market and compete for its benefits and for the appropriation of social wealth and services of the state"; they are also adept at "enlisting outside help in their struggle for power or for sheer survival." Far from being irrelevant, then, the centralized but institutionally weak Lebanese state is deployed instrumentally by a sectarian/political elite bent on reproducing sectarian identities and obviating the emergence of alternative, trans-sectarian or non-sectarian, modes of political mobilization. Syria's demolition of the prewar political elite, and the consequent emergence of unipolar or bipolar postwar sectarian leaders dominating the country's major communities, facilitated this dynamic in the postwar era. This mongrel combination of an institutionally weak but centralized state, one in which sectarian actors often align with external patrons to bolster their power against local opponents, sustains a stubborn institutional and clientelist complex, enables the sectarian/political elite to reproduce sectarian identities and institutional dynamics, and exposes the country to external manipulations, geopolitical contests, and perpetual crisis.

This book joins a wave of post-culturalist studies rejecting ahistorical cultural explanations of Lebanese politics and the durability of sectarian identities. Unlike essentialist and ahistorical primordial explanations of the persistence of sectarianism and sectarian identities in Lebanon, works in this post-culturalist paradigm underscore the very modern and productive power of sectarianism in Lebanese politics. They examine the historicity of sectarian identities, sectarianism as practices of social reproduction, material domination, and national imagination, gendered and class-based resistance to sectarianism, the genealogy of institutionalizing sectarian identities, the impact of sectarian networks and considerations on state institutions and public policies, the provision of social...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 074533413X
• ISBN 13: 9780745334134
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland