ABSTRACT
Special interest attaches to a study of the political structure of Lebanon, the most Westernized of the Arab states in the Near East,! A description and evaluation of elections as a political institution in Lebanon is bound to shed light on the interplay of those socio-economic and religious factors which determine to a large extent the political and constitutional patterns of Lebanese government-in-practice. Research in this field is infrequent in both political science2 and general information publications on the Near East; such publications, also, cannot usually manage to keep up with recent revolutions in the area and the institutional changes resulting therefrom. Because of these revolutions, the scope of representative government has been limited considerably in some parts of the area.
