Governing Dahiya: Interrogating the State in Beirut’s Southern Suburbs

Authors

  • Fouad Gehad Marei Research Associate at the University of Birmingham

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47697/lds.34348002

Keywords:

multi-level governance, Hizbullah, Lebanon, non-state actors, Shia Islam, state theory, urban development

Abstract

Lebanon, a multi-confessional country with an established consociational democracy, is facing the threat of slipping into state failure as it grapples with its soaring political and economic crisis. The country’s governing system has come under increased and perhaps unprecedented scrutiny since the outbreak of popular protests in 2019 as many accuse an oligarchic political and sectarian elite of subordinating the State to their private interests. Based on an empirical examination of the politics of post-war reconstruction in Beirut’s southern suburbs, this article examines regimes of rule beyond the limitations of the seemingly dichotomous categories of State and non-state. The empirical inquiry presented in this article argues for a state analysis that is less concerned with discerning and deciphering where the State begins (or ought to begin) and where its non-state other(s) end (or ought to end), but is concerned instead with unpacking the real and messy workings of government. Rather than relativising the weak-state thesis, this article seeks to extend and complicate our understanding of the State (in Lebanon and beyond) by locating regimes of rule within a broader, dynamically evolving social whole.

Author Biography

Fouad Gehad Marei, Research Associate at the University of Birmingham

Fouad Gehad Marei is a Research Associate at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on governance, state-society relations, insurgency, and Islamist politics in the Middle East. He has research experience in Lebanon and Syria and is particularly interested in conflict dynamics and post-conflict recovery. Fouad previously worked at the University of Erfurt and the Free University of Berlin in Germany and the Orient Institute in Beirut, Lebanon. Fouad has also consulted governments and think tanks on regional and development politics and has been involved in developing and implementing conflict stabilisation and transformation programmes. He holds a PhD from Durham University. E-mail: f.g.marei@bahm.ac.uk

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Published

2020-12-23

How to Cite

Marei, F. G. . (2020). Governing Dahiya: Interrogating the State in Beirut’s Southern Suburbs. Leadership and Developing Societies, 5(1), 12–36. https://doi.org/10.47697/lds.34348002