Consociationalism in Lebanon

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Consociationalism, as a form of democratic rule, is a controversial and widely discussed topic. Its success in Lebanon, is often described as one of the success stories, in a vast accompaniment of failures. After independence from France, Lebanon’s diverse and devout religious committees sought democratic rule that would not force them to abandon their deep rooted religious affiliations and traditions. This small country implemented consociationalism as a mechanism for democracy at the national level, with the creation of the Lebanese Constitution in 1926. Consociationalism worked for several decades in Lebanon, prior to the outbreak of the civil war in 1975. This can be attributed to the fulfillment of prerequisites to effective power-sharing as outlined by Arend Liphart. In this paper, I will demonstrate that Lebanon’s small geographic size, its multi-party system, its multi-axis balance of power between the three disparate groups and external threats were the prerequisites required for, and the reasons for the demise of consociationalism in Lebanon prior to 1975. Consociationalism is taken from the overarching concept of pluralism, and, if effective, is defined by scholar Richard Hrair Dekmejian as a process where “social cleavages are moderated if they are cross-cutting, but tend to generate conflict if they are mutually reinforcing”. Sarah Barclay describes consociationalism as “a way of uniting citizens as members of the state without asking them to renounce their ethnic or sectarian loyalties”. Arend Lijphart, one of the foremost authorities on the sustainability of democracy through consociationalism defines four major characteristics of this system in his work The Politics of Accommodation. For Lijphart, the majority of the responsibility in the success of consociationalism lies in the hands of the political elites. Elites of all religious sects must
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