Paper short abstract:

This paper will illustrate how political settlements in Lebanon contribute to political crises. It will problematize the discourse on inclusion and scrutinise how elite inclusion is advancing instability, and discuss how international actors can support alternative political settlements ‘from below’.

Paper long abstract:

Political settlements have played a central role in Lebanon since its independence from France in 1943. The so-called National Pact of 1943 established the consociational, elite-dominated, power sharing system based on sectarianism, which still persists today, in order to disperse tensions between Muslim and Christian. However, the National Pact arguably failed to prevent the outbreak of the civil war. The political settlement established after the war in 1989 led to the genesis of a state riddle by clientelism and rampant corruption in which warlords and new business elites were integrated side by side traditional elites into the post-war order, enabling them to share the "spoils of truce" (Leenders, 2013). This revived power arrangement continued peacefully until the end of the Syrian occupation in 2005. Since then Lebanon has witnessed several political crises culminating in war, internal violence, and an almost constant political deadlock. Political settlements involving the post-war elite in 2008 and 2012 sought to diffuse these crises by ensured continuation of the power sharing arrangements, but arguably leading to the next crisis. Anti-government protests since 2015 challenging political elites could now ead to the emergence of a settlement 'from below'.

This paper will, thus, illustrate how exactly political settlements evolved in Lebanon, and how they contribute to the current political situation. To this end, this contribution will problematize the discourse on inclusion in political settlements and scrutinise how elite inclusion is advancing instability in Lebanon. It will also discuss how international actors could support alternative political settlements 'from below'.