A new pact before a new map

The region is being reshaped through war, negotiation and shifting alliances. In Lebanon, we hold meetings, issue statements and occasionally pass reforms, yet the central questions remain untouched: who may decide, whose decisions bind whom, and what happens when a powerful actor simply says no? Governance is not merely slow. It is frozen. The country is waiting for permission to function.

The familiar argument is that if the United States and other international powers have been unable to resolve Lebanon’s political deadlock, a domestic settlement is unlikely. Yet external influence and domestic legitimacy are distinct. Foreign governments can exert pressure, support negotiations and help guarantee an agreement. Its durability also depends on whether Lebanese citizens accept its institutions and recognize one another as equal members of the same political community.

National dialogue therefore has a specific purpose: to address the fears of exclusion, unequal treatment and loss of security that make shared authority difficult to accept. It must establish how communities can participate in common institutions without treating compromise as a threat to their survival. The starting point is the relationship between citizens and their shared state, through which disagreements over foreign policy must also be addressed.

Political psychology offers a basis for this approach. In their analysis of 515 studies, Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp found that intergroup contact generally reduces prejudice, with stronger effects under conditions of equal status, cooperation, shared goals and institutional support. These findings suggest a role for sustained, structured interaction alongside political negotiation. The challenge in Lebanon is to turn everyday coexistence into confidence that common rules will protect everyone.

This is the real question behind a social contract. It concerns what citizens owe the state, what the state owes citizens and, in a divided country, what citizens owe one another. If my community accepts limits on its power today, what guarantees that another will respect its rights tomorrow? Our history gives that fear substance. Political leaders keep it alive because fear preserves dependence.

Yet the distance between the Lebanese may be smaller than the system makes it appear. A 2026 study by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Berghof Foundation, including a survey of 1,100 citizens, found broad agreement around peace, security, justice and dignity, and deep distrust in the institutions meant to provide them. That is our paradox: we often agree on the country we want, but do not believe the same rules will protect us on the way there.

This is where my argument for a common identity begins. Being Lebanese should not require anyone to become less Christian, Muslim, Druze, secular or attached to a region. It places these differences inside a larger political “we”, where they no longer determine whose safety matters or who becomes a guest in their own country.

Research I co-authored with 778 participants offers a clue. A defensive, recognition-hungry attachment to one’s sect was associated with greater support for violence against other sects. The same attachment to Lebanon as a whole was associated with opposition to such violence. Ordinary identification alone predicted neither. These correlations do not prove that national identity creates peace, but they suggest that the circle around our “we” matters. Common identity begins when another community’s safety becomes part of our own.

It is precisely our failure to build such a state that has returned federalism to the Lebanese debate. When every national decision becomes an existential confrontation, smaller political units promise autonomy, protection and services closer to the people. Not everyone calling for federalism wants partition. Many are expressing exhaustion with a state that neither decides nor protects.

That argument deserves to be heard. Decentralization can improve accountability, and federalism can protect diversity. But neither spares us the need for a Lebanese agreement. They change where powers are located; they do not settle how the people holding them will relate to one another.

A federation must still decide who controls arms and foreign policy, who carries the debt, how revenue is shared and who protects citizens outside the region associated with their community. It must also protect minorities within each unit, including Lebanese who reject sectarian classification. The fear of becoming a minority does not disappear when a border is drawn. It moves inside the new border.

The same applies to the veto. Minority protection is necessary; permanent paralysis is not. The more actors who can unconditionally block a decision, the harder change becomes. Giving every group a broad federal veto could reproduce the system we are trying to escape, only with new institutions and cleaner lines on a map.

Rights must be enforceable, communal safeguards clear and courts independent. But elected majorities must also govern within constitutional limits. A safeguard should prevent domination, not make obstruction the normal method of politics. Lebanon therefore needs a new national pact before it decides whether it needs a new map. Its purpose is not to make us agree on everything. It is to make disagreement governable.

The pact must begin with a reciprocal commitment. State institutions alone must control organized armed force and decide war and peace. In return, the state must provide every community with protection, equal political standing and reconstruction according to need. Private arms cannot remain the answer to fear, but neither can abandonment or collective punishment become the answer to private arms.

Ordinary policy should be decided by accountable elected majorities. A narrow category of existential questions should require broader communal consent, with precise definitions, time limits and constitutional review. Otherwise, every budget, appointment and reform will remain a threat to someone's existence.

Part of this architecture already exists. Article 22 envisages a non-sectarian Chamber of Deputies alongside a Senate representing religious communities and limited to major national questions. Article 95 provides for a gradual transition away from political confessionalism. They suggest a direction: citizenship in the main political arena, communal protection where necessary and decentralization that empowers citizens rather than reproducing smaller clientelist orders.

Getting there requires an open national dialogue, not another gathering ending with a photograph. Under a parliamentary mandate and a deadline, political forces would negotiate while a representative citizens’ forum examines their proposals and questions their authors. The result must contain reciprocal national obligations, rules separating majority decisions from protected questions and an implementation timetable. The texts and dissenting positions should be public, followed by parliamentary hearings and votes.

Dialogue must not become another excuse to stop governing. Budgets, justice, security and reconstruction must proceed. Foreign policy cannot wait until we somehow learn to love one another. The purpose is to confront disagreement through a shared framework, not hide from it. Trust will not be created by speeches. The state must prove the bargain through transparent reconstruction, predictable municipal funding, equal services and a way to challenge discrimination. People must experience that they can obtain protection or a right without passing through a political intermediary. Trust should be produced by the pact, not demanded in advance as its price.

We may begin around a table. The point is to leave it accepting obligations towards people whose politics we may continue to reject. Lebanon does not need agreement on every question. It needs an agreement that allows decisions to be made and changed without making anyone’s belonging conditional on winning. Until then, federalism remains an expression of the relationship we have failed to repair. A new map without a new pact would only give the old paralysis a different address.