FPM has the right reform agenda! direct election of the president, etc. this would cripple the warlords & allow the voice of the people to be heard. Direct one person, one vote mandate all across the spectrum! True electoral reform!

Then the so-called minority would be the MAJORITY!

The Lebanese system is probably unique in the way in which political representation necessarily operates through the “confessional” hierarchy in spite the existence of all the institutions of a democratic parliamentary regime.

The authors also note:

In the 1980s and 1990s, the search for the origins of the civil war triggered a debate on the part that confessionalism had played in it. Two opposing schools of interpretation clearly stand out. According to the first, certainly the minoritarian one, the Lebanese political system would have been able to sustain and handle the internal class and political conflicts if there had not been the intrusion of external conflicts and pressures into Lebanon. The other, and more widely accepted, interpretation is that the fragile and increasingly more paralyzing process of consensus-seeking, combined with stark socio-economic inequalities, not only made Lebanon vulnerable to external influences but also was so unstable that any potential disturbance (which already is in abundance in that region) would have driven Lebanon into a civil war.

The authors give a very interesting analysis of former president Elias Hrawi’s 1998 proposal to institute civil marriage, arguing:

The
optional civil marriage was utterly rejected by the religious dignitaries
because they perceived the proposal to be a first step in stripping them
of their power over society.

Civil marriage is, to the best of my knowledge, the only legally recognised type of marriage in all European countries (including Switzerland).

The book that this study was published in includes analyses of citizenship laws and minority rights in different countries; I’ve posted a summary of the book in Arabic.

1. Fair reply on the first point. You are right on issues of both institutional engineering and political culture. You are also right as charismatic leaderships with cynical, short-term tactical alignments pose an additional problem.
Anyway, I have many second thoughts about bicameralism, especially if the upper chamber (or senate, whatever you want to call it) is to be made upon confessional/sectarian lines. Except for Bosnia-Herzegovina after Dayton (not necessarily a desirable benchmark), all other countries (as much as I can remember at this time) have a second chamber based on territorial representation without allocation of seats according to ethnic or confessional lines (unless there are seats “reserved” for ethnic/linguistic minorities).
In other words, Switzerland’s upper chamber is made of seats that represent the states of Ticino, Fribourg or Jura, not seats representing Italian-speaking people, German-speakers, French-speakers, Catholics, Protestants, etc.
A bicameralism along confessional lines might end up being Lebanese bicameralism, along the same lines and with the same flaws of Lebanese consociationalism.

2. I disagree with you on the second point. Maybe Joseph de Maistre was a bit excessive when he wrote that “every country has the government it deserves”. But you will probably agree that blaming the elites (“corrupted”, obviously) as responsible of all evils is disingenuous at best. What about the people? The leaders are there because their supporters want them, like them, raise funds for them, carry placards and weapons for them. Whether they do this out of ignorance, lack of alternatives, or sincere convinction is a matter of nearly endless debate and, walla, grand unified theories are not encouraged here.

No offense intended, but a very common sport among the Lebanese is blaming the outsiders (“Isra2eel”, “Suriya”, “Amrika”, Iran, “So3diye”, even “el telyeni”?) and blaming the “leaders” for all evil. This is a very cheap way to avoid responsibility and accountability, and as a blogger committed to intelligent and coherent criticism, you should emphasize this. The myth of a peace-loving, naturally cooperating and open-minded civil society that is derailed by a few “corrupt” leaders has to be deconstructed.

3. It only becomes an issue when parties make it an issue.
Very interesting concept, but I guess it would apply to most issues and most of the political debate in most countries of the world?

You may want to seek electoral law modifications, or you may tag other descriptions to the term democracy such as consociational or consensus or whatever, but then you may end up with a completely different system than democracy.

As it (democracy) started long ago on the city-state scale, the citizen’s assembly was the authority through which decisions were made. There was no need for deputies or elections. The citizen spoke for himself. But there was the deep sense of the unified destiny of the collective of citizens which made the rule of 50+1 the overriding principle in making decisions. Therefore, I’m in agreement with Ghassan over the need for defining what it means to be a citizen of Lebanon. Without this clear definition and its ultimate claim to the loyalty of those who profess to be citizens, democracy will not work. Proportional representation could easily break down just like the current consensus or consociational so-called democracy. For example how would you divide the seats of a certain district if 50 candidates ran for 3 seats and each candidate received less than 10% or even 5% of the votes? You just don’t have enough seats to divide proportionally. You don’t even need to assume such even low distribution of votes to break down the system. If you think it is unlikely, then think twice. The Lebanese have proven very innovative with the help of outsiders in finding ways to defeat any system in order to advance their narrow sectarian allegiances. And I disagree with you Wa Law, the Lebanese are born sectarians. Whether this happens to be due to culture, social pressure, history or genes is unimportant. When it comes to sectarian issues, it so happens time in and time out that the most liberal and enlightened Lebanese coalesce on sectarian lines. It seems by comparing this behavior to the behavior of the citizens of old Athens, the members of the sect have the unified sense of common destiny strictly within the boundaries of their sectarian communities. There is no such sense of unified destiny which may extend to other sects, hence the need for the term co-existence in the preamble to the constitution. If you decide to go against the flow, then you may become irrelevant or a martyr if you decide to enforce your views of non-sectarianism.

Despite all its flaws, Taif is the only document that can be relied upon in order not to break social peace. The agreement foresees decentralization, i.e. giving more local powers to the ‘fiefdoms’ to run their own affairs. It also foresees the elimination of sectarianism from central government politics. None of these stipulations have been implemented for various reasons. You could blame zaims’ conflict of interests or you could blame the presence of illegal weapons in nongovernment hands (mostly sectarian), or the presence of the super rich who hold the sources of outside financing in their hands (mostly sectarian) keeping the other communities well-beings at their mercy, or you could also blame those who feel left out at the time of the deal (mostly sectarian) and seem not to like it but with no alternative to offer except the entrenchment of sectarianism and constant non-sensical bickering about so-called ‘lost powers’.

I agree with QN on one point only with regards to electoral laws. It is only necessary to revisit electoral laws in order to redress the imbalance created by the so-called sacred 50-50 allocation of PM seats between the two major communities. At one point this has to be abolished and a more equitable formula for representation has to be found. But implementing Taif will indirectly take care of this issue

On another subject, it seems that M14 still have some strategist/thinkers who can stand up to Jumblatt and call spade a spade:
http://www.14march.org/news-details.php?nid=MTY2Njg2
This is like calling Jumblatt’s bluff on his latest acrobatic maneuvers. It is likely that we may be witnessing the eclipse of Jumblatt’s role as the belle weather that he has occupied for so long. His latest maneuvers are nothing but attempts to survive politically within his constituents because he is vastly outflanked by Hariri’s supporters in several of his own districts. In fact he may not even have the allegiance of all or most of the 12 members of his block. Hence his talk about the need to defuse polarization between M8 and M14 and the yearning to Arabism is more like an appeal to these Hariri supporters ahead of the next elections four years from now. Will he succeed? Let’s see.

So there you go. This is a good example of sectarian zaims who can easily package rhetoric with outdated nationalism and grand aims that hide ulterior motives. Wouldn’t keeping the polarization alive have led to a majority government and a minority opposition in parliament? It would be something similar but not exactly like Labor on one bench and Conservative on the other. It could have been an initial experiment that would force the elimination of sectarianism and the merging of all these tiny blocks into parties of common charters based on political platforms and common vision.

By the way do you hear from AK?

I was just teasing.

The salient difference between closed PR and the current system is in its distribution of power vis-a-vis electoral returns. Sure, the current system incentivizes list-formation and deal-making, but the goal is always to simply make it over that 50% mark, so as to reap ALL the rewards.

With PR, there is no magic 50% mark; there is no mark at all (apart from the threshold, which can be set as low as you like… preferably not too low). Therefore, there is no need to use consensus politics to adjust for the lopsided results engendered by majoritarianism.