Belfast vs Beirut: The diverging paths of post-conflict states

Lebanon is far from the first nation to emerge from a civil war only to confront the limits of a fragile political bargain. Nearly three decades before Taif reshaped Lebanon’s postwar landscape, Northern Ireland faced its own moment of reckoning: how to govern a society still defined by sectarian divisions that initially fuelled its conflict.

Beginning in 1968 through 1998, North Ireland experienced thirty years of civil conflict in a period known as The Troubles that claimed more than 3,500 lives and upended daily life across the region. Lebanon, meanwhile, experienced its own crippling civil war that left hundreds of thousands of dead and the country in economic ruin.

Power-sharing frameworks after war

Yet beyond enduring a protracted violent, sectarian conflict, what links Northern Ireland and Lebanon is the existence of a post-conflict political system in which divisions of power are defined along ethnoreligious lines. In Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement created a system in which unionists (those who had advocated to remain within the UK), and nationalists (those who sought a united, independent Ireland) must govern together through a joint First Ministership and multi-party governing executive. Such a model of institutionalized power-sharing echoes Lebanon’s confessional allocation of political authority among its sects as stipulated by the 1989 Taif Agreement.

Both systems evidently possess flaws, as government breakdowns under the current frameworks have become recurrent fixtures for the two nations. Since 1999, Northern Ireland’s government has collapsed or been suspended six times, while Lebanon can point to a political trajectory marked by similar volatility. From the collapse of Lebanon’s Unity Government in 2011 over the UN-backed investigation into the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s resignation in 2019 to the two-year presidential vacancy that ended with President Joseph Aoun’s election in January 2025, the state has repeatedly slipped into vacancy, deadlock, or collapse.

Northern Ireland and Lebanon furthermore remain marked by sharp social divisions, as sectarian identities continue to dictate patterns of daily life. In Northern Ireland, for instance, Catholic and Protestant families and schools remain overwhelmingly segregated by religion, while in Lebanon many still live, study, and socialize within sect-specific environments.

Yet for all its persistent divisions, Northern Ireland has not faced renewed sectarian conflict or a crippling economic crisis since its Good Friday agreement signed almost 30 years ago. Although Northern Ireland’s “peace dividend” - a term to describe the economic boost a nation experiences following the resolution of a conflict - might be relatively small, the nation is thoroughly integrated into the economic fabric of Western Europe and has yet to experience the economic failure that Lebanon has endured.

Lebanon, on the other hand, has been subject to chronic political and economic instability since the passing of Taif. Consider its wars with Israel alone and the human and economic costs are staggering. In 2006, the conflict with Israel resulted in the death of over 1,100 people, the displacement of more than a quarter of the Lebanese population and generated an estimated $2.8 billion in costs. The most recent war killed 4,000 and again displaced a quarter of the population, with the World Bank estimating total reconstruction and recovery needs at roughly $11 billion.

Diverging paths post peace

So, what accounts for the different trajectories following the solution of their civil conflicts? While no single explanation explains the divergence, two prominent factors are the more equitable distribution of capital that occurred in Northern Ireland and the contrasting role foreign powers played in the countries’ postwar reconstruction process.

As education and labor reforms in the 1990s in Northern Ireland brought about a more even distribution of wealth, economic imbalances between Protestants and Catholics lessened. By the early 2000s, people in Northern Ireland were experiencing standards of living previously denied to many segments of the population, most noticeably its Catholic community.

The same levelling of opportunity could not be said for Lebanon. Although the conclusion of Lebanon’s civil war triggered major economic initiatives, reconstruction efforts did not reduce social inequities but rather cemented an uneven pattern of postwar development that benefitted politically connected networks. An estimated eighty percent of reconstruction funding was invested into Beirut and the Mount Lebanon Governorate, thereby benefitting a selective sliver of Lebanese society, leaving large segments of the country to shoulder the cost of underinvestment.

From a foreign power perspective, the primary international actors involved in Northern Ireland, namely the United States and the EU, facilitated the development initiatives that enabled Northern Ireland's economic revitalization. In Lebanon, foreign nations with competing geopolitical goals have exacerbated the country’s existing sectarian tensions and frequently treated the country as grounds for their own proxy wars and regional conflicts. For years Lebanon has served as both an instrument and casualty of Iranian influence in the region, while Gulf Countries and the United States gradually ceased any attempt to meaningfully support Lebanese state institutions, resigning Lebanon to Tehran’s orbit.

Towards sustainable Lebanese statehood

To enable political and economic stability, foreign powers, most notably the Gulf countries and the United States, must therefore reassess their approach and commit to engaging with Lebanon in a way that strengthens, rather than undermines, the country’s sovereignty. The lifting of Saudi’s import ban, increased military support to the Lebanese Armed Forces, and continued collaboration with the Aoun-Salam administration are critical steps for allowing Lebanon to rebuild credible state authority. 

Lebanon’s economic and political problems, however, will not be resolved through more productive foreign partnerships. Rather, the systemic drivers of its dysfunction — corruption, inequality, and sectarianism — must be dismantled for any lasting stabilization to occur. 

While it would be an oversimplification to simply equate Northern Ireland’s Catholics to Lebanon’s Shi’a, the integration of Catholics into Northern Ireland helped erode sectarian grievances. Factions like Hezbollah would not have established itself as a key political and military actor if the Lebanese Shi’a had not been neglected within the postwar governance apparatus. Economic and social inequality is a threat to Lebanon’s ability to exist as a sovereign state. Lebanon should therefore learn from Northern Ireland’s success in building more inclusive institutions, and invest in policies that reduce sectarian inequalities. Only then will Lebanon be able to fully restore its sovereignty.