ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a socio-political account of how pervasive brokerage networks developed between the main groups involved in the reconstruction process in south Lebanon after the 2006 war. Particular attention is given to Jihād al-Bināʾ experts, a new technocratic elite within Hezbollah. Acting as both community leaders and political brokers, these experts regulated reconstruction efforts and communal life while negotiating with international donors and establishing a position for themselves in the community through the vehicle of development projects. Such alliances have facilitated the rise of a new mode of governmentality in managing reconstruction projects and beneficiaries. Moreover, developmental rhetoric and the capacity to ‘do something’ were used as a means to negotiate demands with local patrons and to contest the latter’s full control over policy-making at the municipal level. By looking at the way in which communities have been rendered technical by the political elite and the international community, the chapter ultimately sheds light on how patron-clients relations in Lebanon are constantly regenerated and implicitly legitimised by international actors.