Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Parreira, Christiana

Titel

The Art of Not Governing: Local Politics in Postwar Lebanon

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This dissertation examines how local government institutions reinforce or undermine the stability of predatory democracies -- regimes where free and fair elections coincide with high levels of elite rent-seeking and non-inclusive social policies. It focuses on one type of predatory democracy, the party cartel system. In party cartel systems, dominant political factions form a pact following elections with the aim of eliminating competition in subsequent electoral cycles. Like most predatory democratic regimes, such systems inevitably invite outside challengers to run for office and overthrow the cartel. In Lebanon and elsewhere, however, party cartels often enjoy remarkable resilience even while enacting unpopular policies. The dissertation argues that local governments constitute key institutions upon which party cartels rely to reinforce their power. The dissertation provides evidence for these claims through a single-country study of Lebanon, where a post-war party cartel oversaw extraordinarily high levels of elite predation and low levels of welfare provision. It relies on local electoral data; an original municipal elite survey conducted after the latest local elections; a national survey conducted before and during the 2019-20 protests; and 142 interviews collected during 2016-2020 fieldwork in Lebanon. The analysis combines large-N statistical analysis of local elections and governance outcomes with comparative analysis of a smaller set of municipal case studies. Three key findings emerge. First, the Lebanese civil war constituted a formative period during which members of the soon-to-be party cartel began coopting local government institutions. This process occurred unevenly, and was only partially complete by the end of the war. Following the war's end, party cartel members gradually began to consolidate control over municipalities, uniting to compete against vestiges of the pre-war elite class. Crucial to this process was the withholding of public goods from competitive municipalities and rewarding of them to loyal cartel strongholds. Finally, because the spread of cartel control over municipalities across Lebanon gradually extinguished electoral opposition, the cartel inadvertently laid the groundwork for more contentious, extra-electoral mobilization, culminating in protests that began in October 2019