ABSTRACT
The withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon on April 26, 2005 was celebrated as a watershed event in Lebanon’s path toward democratic recovery. Fifteen years of almost total Syrian control had reduced the Lebanese state to an institutional shell, dominated by a proxy security regime and allied former warlords, despite the trappings of civilian political participation. George W. Bush’s promise of a Cedar Revolution in post-Syria Lebanon has turned sour, however, clashing against a rigid sectarian political system and the calculations of domestic actors and their external allies. Democracy and national unity are the main casualties in the battle to redesign the political architecture of post-Syria Lebanon. Sectarian politicians advanced narrow political interests at the expense of democratic standards and participation; and national sentiments have been replaced by a more aggressive and unabashed sectarianism. Moreover, Washington’s democracy promotion discourse in Lebanon has been unmasked as a cover for a sinister plot to relocate Lebanon from one regional camp to another. To be sure, the sectarian system in Lebanon is not without historical roots
predating the establishment of the independent state in 1943; nor was it insulated from external interventions that were at times instrumental in negotiating sectarian peace, but at others served to aggravate sectarian tensions in the country. In fact, successive power-sharing arrangements negotiated first in Mount Lebanon and then in the independent Lebanese republic conditioned viable intercommunal coexistence on the principle of sectarian representation.2 Once institutionalized, however, the priorities of the all powerful sectarian political edifice assumed precedence over proper democratic norms and practices. In fact, independent Lebanon’s multiple consociational arrangements have stymied demands for better accountability, representation, and transparency, while sanctioning the neopatrimonial practices of sectarian politicians.
