ABOUT THIS BOOK

The Arab Spring unsettled regimes across North Africa and the Middle East, from Morocco to Oman. Lebanon, however, proved immune. How can that be explained? What features of Lebanese politics and governance could account for the system’s ability to withstand the domestic and regional pressures unleashed by the Arab Spring?

The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon builds on extensive field work to find the answers to those questions and more. Bassel Salloukh, Lebanon’s leading political scientist, analyses the mix of institutional, clientelist, and discursive practices that sustain the sectarian nature of Lebanon, revealing an expanding sectarian web that occupies ever-more-substantial areas of everyday life in Lebanon. It also highlights the struggles waged by opponents of the system, including women, public sector employees, teachers, students, and NGO-based coalitions, and how their efforts often fail to bear fruit because of sabotage by various systematic forces.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Bassel F. Salloukh is associate professor of political science at the Lebanese American University. Rabie Barakat is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Edinburgh. Jinan S. Al-Habbal is a PhD candidate in international relations at the University of St Andrews. Lara W. Khattab and Shoghig Mikaelian are PhD candidates in political science at Concordia University in Montreal.

REVIEWS

“The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon provides a very thoughtful account of sectarianism in the Lebanese electoral system, military, media, and associational life. Above and beyond this, the authors' theoretically rich post-culturalist lens offers considerable insight into the role played by institutions, discourse, clientalism, economic power, political mobilization, and regional context. This book should be read by all those interested in both Lebanese politics and the broader dynamics of entrenched identity-based politics.”

— Rex Brynen, McGill University

“A must-read for anyone interested in what is going on in Lebanon and the Middle East today. Adapting Foucault's tools of 'practices of governance and practices of freedom,' Salloukh and his colleagues show in detail how a complex form of sectarian governance operates in Lebanon, and survey the practices of freedom for democratic change that have developed in response. The diffusion of similar practices in the post-popular uprisings Arab World bodes ill for the future of the region.”

— James Tully, University of Victoria, Canada

“The authors make an important contribution to the study of identity politics in the Middle East by showing how sectarianism is reproduced and reinforced as a socio-political force in Lebanon. Their account examines the ways in which sectarianism plays out in multiple policy areas such as the labor and women's movements, the media, and legal frameworks, and shows how sectarian political forces wittingly and unwittingly undercut the efforts of civil society actors to organize along alternative lines. The book offers a far more compelling treatment than many journalistic accounts of the dynamics of sectarianism and is a valuable complement to existing scholarly literature, which largely focuses on the emergence rather than reproduction and dynamic reconstitution of sectarianism in Lebanon. This is an important approach because it addresses the critical question of why sectarianism persists and why it is so difficult to undo.”

— Melani Cammett, Harvard University

“A judicious and well-argued case for why sectarianism continues to dominate the Lebanese political system, even though there is nothing inevitable about that result. Salloukh and his co-authors demonstrate that sectarianism is the result of a carefully constructed and mutually reinforcing system of political, economic, and social institutions, not the product of some primordial Lebanese political culture. But they also demonstrate how hard it is to change the institutions that have entrenched sectarianism in the Lebanese system.”

— F. Gregory Gause, III, Texas A&M University

“By unpacking and critically assessing the production and reproduction of sectarian identities across a broad range of social, political, and economic domains, and how these processes intersect with and affect governance, political economy, and state-society relations, the authors of this exceptional volume have added immeasurably to our understanding of the role of sectarian identities in all spheres of Lebanese life.”

— Steven Heydemann, United States Institute of Peace

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction
2. A Political History of Sectarian Institutions
3. Institutions, Sectarian Populism, and the Production of Docile Subjects
4. Neoliberal Sectarianism and Associational Life
5. Sectarianism and Struggles for Socioeconomic Rights
6. Elections, Electoral Laws, and Sectarianism
7. Between Sectarianism and Military Development: The Paradox of the Lebanese Armed Forces
8. The Postwar Mediascape and Sectarian Demonizing
9. Overlapping Domestic/Geopolitical Contests, Hizbullah, and Sectarianism
10. Conclusion
Notes
Index