ABSTRACT
The implication of Lebanese modernization, expressed in part due to emigration abroad to the Americas, adumbrated nonetheless a possible spiritual crisis when the Lebanese would live in two worlds, their native one and then a foreign one, and slip into a mode of Levantine schizophrenia. Lebanese politics was a game constantly in motion, demanding special skills of adaptation, negotiation, and contriving and devising solutions, generally temporary, for never-ending problems. The choice of a Maronite president reflects something of the political logic of Lebanon's confessional system. This is tied to the way that Lebanon validates the political significance of religion, the binding of "church and state," and refrains from launching a secular republic based on one adult/one vote on a universal basis of equality, rather than a sectarian basis of segmented publics. The culture of Lebanon is, we have intimated, the bedrock of Lebanese politics.
