Lebanon: A Century of a Constitutional Contradiction

Elie T. Elias

Middle East at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik & Lebanese American University

In historical terms, Lebanon was created as a single state to safeguard the multiple specificities of the cultural communities present on its territories. Article 9 of the Constitution states: 

There shall be absolute freedom of conscience. The state in rendering homage to the God Almighty shall respect all religions and creeds and shall guarantees, under its protection the free exercise of all religious rites provided that public order is not disturbed. It shall also guarantee that the personal status and religious interests of the population, to whatever religious sect they belong, shall be respected.

Initially, Lebanon was born out of a historical claim for the preservation of the political and religious freedom of the Christian communities, especially the Maronites, as an expression of a very long struggle of the Orient minorities to claim their rights for representation in the ruling systems. 

The Lebanese have a strong mental image of themselves as members of a representative and democratic system. In contrast, the sense of justice implied in proportional communal representation has been a source of contention, with supporters and detractors equally divided and unable to avoid the source of their disagreements. This was the belief held by the Lebanese founding fathers during the state's formation between 1920, the year of the declaration of the Greater Lebanon, and 1943, the year of the independence from the French Mandate.

The founding fathers were primarily key legislators and public figures during the Republic's formative years. They envisioned a commonwealth of multicultural communities united by a common language, mixed residential areas, urbanism, and a limited degree of shared history. To compensate for the communal diversity, the founders proposed (a) a tolerance toward all spiritual families, (b) a public sphere tailored to commonly agreed-upon grounds, and (c) a reasonable degree of liberty (culturally, socially, and economically). They preserved the religious zone in personal law as they found it and promoted political participation and various political and civic freedoms in crafting the state institutions with a democratic foreign sponsor, the mandatory power.

Furthermore, the founders were deliberate in implementing a design with an underlying idea of political justice based on proportional representation. This was the original meaning of the communal quota system, which initially provided firstly a protective shield for small communities from the tyranny of the majority community or a coalition of communities; and, secondly, ensured security for all sects in whichever constituency they happened to vote. Fixed proportionality ensured that no community would be deprived of its rightful place in government due to acrimonious electoral competition. And that is what explains why the religious institutions preserved their powers in dealing with the religious issues of their respective communities. 

The first century of the Lebanese republic (1926-2022) demonstrated that the idea of coexistence that was the vision of the founding fathers was not practically respected in a centralized political system. Since the inception of Lebanon in 1920, the country exercised a centralized political and administrative system. The main component of the central authority was the idea of socio-national fusion that has proven to be successful in countries with a religious and cultural majority. In the Lebanese case, its society is multicultural, and stands out as plural and respectful of the rights of the communities as confirmed in the National Pact. 

The constitutional contradiction here was that a centralized homogeneous regime was applied to a heterogeneous society. 

Between Theory and Facts 

A centralized administrative regime is defined as a regime where the decision-making power is centralized in the hands of the officials who are at the top of the pyramid; a regime where the power is exercised and concentrated in the central government in the capital city and its respective representatives in the regions (de-concentration), with no participation from elected local bodies. Centralization is thus political, restricting political power to one sole State institution; and also economic, acting under the supervision of the State by locking in the economic enterprise in all its aspects and orienting it as planned. 

So, by studying the evolution of the Lebanese entity, since its inception and until today, we can make the following observations: 

1. The political and constitutional historical context has evolved in a vicious circle as a result of the constituent divergences: repetitive political conflict → dead-end reached → breakup between communities, politically or violently → repeated temporary settlements, which do not deal with the roots of the problem but just with the superficial aspect of the crises.

2. There has been a growing erosion of the functions of constitutional institutions that leads to paralysis and a detrimental division of the remnants of power to all protagonists, seen in sectarian and family feudalism and an internal awareness within communities that are becoming more and more isolationist and focused on defending the rights of one’s own community instead of looking for common denominators among all communities.

3. There is a crisis of political behaviour between communities in many respects. The balance of power always underlies political decisions, which empties partnership and consensus from their aims, and leads to unstable constitutional/political equations that indicate the prevalence of the logic of dominance in the political mindset of the communities, which is contrary to the logic of mutual acknowledgement and coexistence. This results in a political practice that is consensual in appearance but uses the logic of consensus, depending on the circumstances, in favor of self-interest and not as a principle that creates and maintains stability in a multicultural society. 

4. There is a high number of emigrants and poverty has risen according to statistics and data on the components of the Lebanese communities and their economic situation. The application of the centralized administrative regime has constituted a threat to free pluralistic existence in general, and to the historical Christian communities in particular. The current net migration rate for Lebanon in 2022 is -20.553 per 1000 population, a 24.28% increase from 2021. In 2019 there was 89.36% increase from 2018. 

The Lebanese communities show social, political and cultural contradictions and these are mainly reflected constitutionally in the inconsistency between the constitutional text and its definition of the State and the regime, and the customs (solutions to deal with political crises) that take the State and the regime into directions that are contrary to the constitutional content.

Presidential elections provide an example. According to Article 49, the president is elected by secret ballot of parliamentary deputies with a two-thirds majority in the first round and an absolute majority in any subsequent rounds. The president’s term is six years long, and he or she can be re-elected only for another six years. 

Article 49 does not define quorum, and given the Constitution's silence on the subject, some believe that a quorum in a parliamentary session called to elect a president should be the same as the general rule outlined in Article 34: an absolute majority of those members. According to the text, a parliamentary session is not legally binding if not “attended by a majority of its constituent members.”

Despite this, it is customary to postpone first-round voting until a quorum of two-thirds is reached: when two-thirds of parliamentarians are present, the session is declared open and voting by secret ballot may begin. Even during the 15 years of civil war, this custom was followed. The office of parliament and the administration and justice committee declared on May 5, 1976, that the requirement in Article 49 requiring a candidate to receive a two-thirds majority in the first round of voting meant that two-thirds of deputies had to be present before voting began.

In subsequent rounds, the lack of a clear constitutional text on the subject returns us to the same criterion used in the first round. However, while the requirement of a two-thirds majority in the first round necessitates the attendance of 86 members for a quorum, the simple majority requirement in subsequent rounds necessitates the attendance of only 65 deputies. The issue of quorums in subsequent voting rounds has not been adequately discussed as part of the political and legal debate for two reasons: first, the debate has centered on the issue of the first-round quorum, and second, when a candidate receives a two-thirds majority in the first round, voting usually moves immediately into the subsequent rounds, without delaying the process to a later date. Using the attendance quorum in every round has become a key strategy for the Shi’ite speaker of the parliament to impose a choice between either electing a president or a political vacuum. 

What we can learn from the mechanism applied during the presidential elections is that on the one hand, the Constitution asserts the political centralization and the unity of institutions and the people, while on the other hand the customs/traditions confirm a hybrid formulation of the State: it is neither a centralized state nor a federal one. We are in a disguised, distorted, and incomplete federalism, in the sense of a plural societal basis that gives the communities only quasi-autonomy in their affairs. This is what some call “personal federalism” (for a definition see Böckenförde, p. 36). 

The first century of the Lebanese republic maintained two constant, yet opposing, ways of ruling: first a permanent duality in the function of the constitutional institutions as an expression of the State’s structure that has become a framework of confrontation; and second the struggle of communities at the level of the central power. 

The continuity and stability of a multicultural society requires a minimum of two things: socially, guarantees for existence (identity, economic, living, political) for communities within the frame of their specificities and autonomy; and politically, a form of State and regime that relies on the rule of equal representation and equal influence in decision making, which obviously requires limits on the balance of power. 

Decentralization, Federation or Regionalism?

Since the ‘60s, many political leaders and movements raised the need to apply some form of decentralization in Lebanon. Most politicians and public figures concerned with administrative reforms in Lebanon have repeatedly expressed their wish to reform the political and administrative State regime by adopting administrative decentralization and granting local governments more powers and responsibilities in the management of their own affairs and in delivering public services that meet the needs and priorities of the people of their areas.

There is not one model of decentralization; there are multiple models, each fitting the specificities, requirements and needs of the society where it is applied. Consequently, there is no standard pattern for decentralization that is always applicable in all places. 

Today, more than two decades after the adoption of the Taif Agreement, known as the “National entente paper”, the administrative decentralization project has still not been realized, despite promises made by successive governments in this regard, and all relevant proposals and draft laws. 

Lebanon is a multicultural conflictual society that lacks the basic conditions for its stability and internal peace, which is the basis for a stable constitutional structure. What prevails is a crisis of political and ideological thought that does not meet the requirements of the diverse society as to the differentiation in equality and equity, socially and politically. An inadequate understanding of the logic and notion of unity prevails over achieving political cohesion and translating it constitutionally within the framework of centralization, and one of its current expressions is the demand for cancellation of political sectarianism; building unity on an ideological basis (of inclusive character), at a time when the diverse society requires a federal unity that is based on common interests. 

In addition to the aforementioned factors, there is a concern about the emergence of fundamentalist religious ideologies since the mid-1980s (Hezbollah is an example) that are totalitarian and reject pluralism, whose logic rejects the principles of differentiation and equality, and which seek to favor the interests of a regional religious enterprise at the expense of the Lebanese national interest. 

Therefore, it is not possible in the foreseeable future to settle the conflictual state of Lebanese society. This means practically that it is impossible to reach a stable form of the State and the regime, which will then continue to oscillate with the waves of prevailing political thought and the unstable political practice. 

The constitutional coupling in the political system between the logic and spirit of the classical parliamentary regime on the one hand, and the logic and spirit of consensus on the other, has gradually produced a kind of consensus that has emptied the constitutional text of its meaning. 

Furthermore, there should be efforts made to limit the effects and impact of the conflictual state and focus on mitigating the tensions by looking for soothing solutions that ease the relationships between communities. These might constitute a gradual preamble for stability based on an adequate constitutional format. 

The current Lebanese situation does not require an exacerbation of the tension among its components and a revival of additional factors of fear and caution, but rather a search for exits that mitigate tensions and reassure all communities about their existence and respect for their cultural, social, and political specificities. Therefore, we can say that betting on a punctual revival of the centralized regime will only lead to more tensions and a stronger feeling of frustration and concern about the future.

Elie T. Elias is lecturer in history of Lebanon and the Middle East at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik and the Lebanese American University. He is the Director of the Middle East Institute for Research and Strategic Studies and co-founder of the Lebanese Heritage Foundation

Suggested Citation: Elie T. Elias, ‘Lebanon: A Century of a Constitutional Contradiction’ IACL-AIDC Blog (18 October 2022) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/lebanon/2022/10/18/lebanon-a-century-of-a-constitutional-contradiction.