Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the entanglement of national energy strategies, global aid economy, and patronage politics, based on research in Lebanon of a planned private-sector wind power project, highlighting the instrumental importance of capture of state institutions by a globalised entrepreneurial elite.

Paper long abstract:

In 2018, the state of Lebanon awarded three contracts to private companies to build the first wind energy power plants in Lebanon, in a bid to fulfil the country's 2010 commitment to produce 12% of its total power requirements for Lebanon through renewable sources by 2020 and aid an ailing power sector. Two of the three companies are owned by an Arab businessman who has investments across the Arab region, particularly in post conflict contexts. More importantly, he is also business partner of Lebanese prime minster in several private sector endeavours.

Based on preliminary field work in the winter of 2019 in the north of Lebanon, desk research, and sustained research on Lebanon's political anthropology, this paper seeks to explore the entanglements between state and private sector actors and concerns, where the mobilisation of politics of apportionment, clientelism and sectarian/ political identities, as well as state bureaucracy are key to private sector gain and continued capture of state resources by the ruling elite. The paper explores how the wind power projects are imagined within national energy strategies and presented to the international community for aid and investment, and negotiated locally in the field vis-a-vis members of the community, land owners, and members of the local governments.

The paper engages with a recent trope in the literature on the sate in Lebanon, that contests its depiction as a 'weak state', but rather highlights the instrumental importance of capture of state institutions by the elite in a global aid economy.