Introductory Overview -- Review and Critique of the Literature on Consociational Democracy -- Pre-War Lebanon: a Dance into the Abyss of Consociationalism -- Post-War Lebanon: The Lost Republic's Peregrinations -- Post-War Lebanon's Long and Perilous Road to Democracy -- What about Post-War Consociationalism? -- Final Appraisal
Summary
Annotation Since the inception of the fragile nation-state in 1943, Lebanon has been faced with the constantly unstable predicament of being torn between Middle Eastern and Western orbits. After examining Lebanons pre-war consociational democracy as well as the factors behind its collapse in 1975, Tamirace Fakhoury Mühlbacher analyses the post-war order (1990-2006) by shedding light on both interrelated phenomena: communal power-sharing in a turbulent environment and Lebanons hybrid democratisation between Syrian tutelage and the impulses for more liberalisation against the backdrop of exogenous and endogenous factors. The author analyses in detail Lebanons uncertain 2005 system transition, the so-called 'Beirut Spring', and its aftermath. In a critical perspective, she highlights fundamental communal and political dynamics that result from the collision of internal and external conflict lines on Lebanese ground, and how the former have impeded balanced power-sharing and democratisation in the small Arab Republic. This book is essential reading for researchers and students from the social sciences, in particular sociology and political science
