The methodology for truly understanding Lebanon

Source: Nidaa El Watan

A foreign diplomat once remarked: “If someone tells you they understand Lebanon, it means they haven’t been clearly explained to!” This does not, as is often assumed, mean that Lebanon is impossible to understand. Rather, it reflects the fact that the prevailing methodologies used to study the country are often flawed and non-analytical.

Those who have dedicated their lives to Lebanon, like many of the nation’s founding fathers and leading Lebanese and foreign researchers, regularly face a mental “dumpster” of repetitive, superficial, and ideologically driven writings. After repeated crises and tests, the focus should no longer be on drafting reform papers, or what Waddah Sharara, during Lebanon’s wars, referred to as “the paper pushers”, but on correcting the methodology itself when approaching Lebanese affairs.

What constitutes a proper, analytical methodology? Three core directions:

1. Contemporary scientific classification of Lebanon’s constitutional system

Every unusual or seemingly objectionable phenomenon can be studied scientifically by classifying it (classification/typology) to determine its causes, explanations, and potential remedies. Since the 1970s, comparative research has aimed to classify constitutional systems worldwide that were previously considered sui generis, unique, such as Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, former Yugoslavia, the Low Countries, Fiji, Mauritius, Northern Ireland, Ghana, Nigeria, and Lebanon.

In this context, various terms have been applied, starting from Lebanon at the 1970 UNESCO conference: consociatio, proporzdemocratie, concordance, power sharing. In 1986, a conference at the Lebanese University, accompanied by a co-authored book with Lebanese and foreign researchers, Arend Lijphart, Theodor Hanf, Heribert Adam, advanced this methodology. Yet many Lebanese, Arab, and foreign writers treated these studies as doctrines, philosophies, or theories, like capitalism, communism, or socialism, when in fact they were analytical classifications/typologies.

From such classifications, the next step is to conduct case studies to identify which aspects of the system are healthy and which are problematic, much like in medicine, where we distinguish healthy and diseased organs such as the eye, stomach, or liver.

In Lebanon and the broader Arab region, translations of terms from English, German, or French often become slogans or tools for manipulation. Even religion has been misappropriated by terrorist organizations claiming Islam. High-level concepts in law and political science, such as pact, consensus, power sharing, consociation, have often been reduced to quotas, political bargaining, paralysis, and sectarian privileges, all presented under market-driven rhetoric.

2. Avoiding conflation and hierarchy

When Lebanese analysts study Lebanon’s complex realities, they often mix issues indiscriminately and without prioritization, producing vague, repetitive, and non-analytical discussions, frequently focused on “sectarianism” or other generalized topics. For instance, when ideological authors focus on “the system,” it is often unclear whether they mean the constitutional text, its practical implementation, or the political discourse aimed at mobilization.

3. The nature of religious and cultural pluralism

All forms of pluralism, even within a harmonious nuclear family, are challenging to manage, though not impossible. Pluralism must operate according to established democratic norms. Cultural and social pluralism, encompassing religion, ethnicity, language, and communal identity, has unique characteristics, varying degrees of stability, and requires specific mechanisms such as legal pluralism (pluralisme juridique) and affirmative measures (discrimination positive). These mechanisms exist in over forty countries worldwide today and are applied in Lebanon through Article 95 of the Constitution, which some Lebanese dismiss as mere “sectarianism.”

Many authors employ the term “communitarian” when discussing Lebanon’s constitutional system. In practice, this has become a slogan, neglecting the social and cultural dimensions necessary for analytical study of democratic governance in multi-religious and multicultural societies. Such societies have managed pluralism successfully for centuries, long before the rise of assimilationist nationalist currents that opposed Arab and Islamic constitutional traditions.

At a university conference in October 2025, attended by over thirty experts and self-proclaimed specialists, a foreign participant remarked: “What is written in Article 95 of the Constitution is unparalleled in any other constitution!” The discussions highlighted encyclopedic studies on managing religious and cultural pluralism globally, and comparative constitutional research on legal pluralism, affirmative measures, and regulatory standards.