It could be argued that, by running their political systems based on group religion and identity, Iraq and Lebanon have traded a vast undersupply of public goods and a static representational governance model for peace and stability. But recent history suggests that while the downsides of this trade-off are apparent, the upsides are less certain. Consider, for example, the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, the 2006 Lebanon-Israel conflict, the 2008 struggle for control over Beirut, the 2020 Beirut port blast, the several rounds of sectarian violence in Iraq between 2005 and 2009, the rise of Islamic State (IS) in 2014, violence against protesters, and increasing confrontation between the government and several Iran-linked armed groups after 2018. To explore this argument, we first take a brief look at the institutional and legal particularities of sectarian governance in each country.

Lebanon’s rigid consociationalism

Lebanon adopted a consociational approach to governance in its early days of contemporary state formation.[9] Sectarianism became an institution that turned into a ‘socially-constructed reality’ with the passage of time.[10] Lebanon’s political framework placed sectarianism at the heart of all facets of political life: political representation; justice and security; and access to resources.[11] This framework was formalised in 1989, when a Saudi-led effort brokered the Taif Accord to end the civil war. The Accord guaranteed power sharing through religious institutions – 11 officially recognised sects were to be represented in the government’s legislative and executive branches, with separate personal status laws and courts for each.[12] A proportional number of high-level government offices, cabinet seats (including ministries up to the level of secretary-general and general-director), parliamentary positions, judicial council members, and public sector jobs were reserved for representatives of each religious community.[13] Under Taif, positions are shared equally between Christian and Muslim sects, replacing the earlier 1943 National Pact, which favoured Christians by a ratio of 6:5.

The new constitution also shifted executive power from the Maronite President to the Council of Ministers, presided over by a Sunni Muslim prime minister and administered by a Shi’a Speaker of Parliament. However, the balance of power is guaranteed by veto power granted to all three major political communities through the three ‘presidencies’ (the prime minister, speaker of the parliament and president), forming a ‘Triumvirate or Troika’.[14] The objective of this mutual veto system is to ensure that different political communities can protect their interests and must cooperate to enable meaningful governmental decision making.

Once in power, however, mutual vetoes coupled with superficial interconfessional alliances led more often to stalemate and inoperability than to good governance and cooperation. This undermined executive decision making by making it difficult to garner consensus for contentious decisions. An example of such stalemate is the presidential vacuum that occurred between 2014 and 2016 as political factions struggled to elect a new president. A standoff ensued that effectively paralysed the country for over two years, since the president appoints a prime minister to form a government. The decision to elect Michel Aoun as president came after an agreement was reached between him and Saad Hariri. Few details are known about the terms of the deal, apart from a pledge to appoint Hariri as PM in exchange for him dropping his opposition to Aoun’s candidacy.[15] The executive branch is approved by parliament and the presidency, and reflects parliament’s power-sharing model as well as featuring representation of different sectarian groups. This has produced conflicts of interest between the legislature and executive that have paralysed the executive. A good example is Hassan Diab’s ‘government of specialists’, which came into being as the result of another bout of haggling by Lebanon’s ruling elites. After failing to implement reform policies – which were continuously rejected in parliament – Diab’s cabinet resigned once it became clear that, to protect party interests, parliament was refusing an independent investigation into the Beirut port blast.

On top of elite scheming to retain as much control as possible, the rigid sectarian quotas in both elected and non-elected public offices are unresponsive to demographic change. This means that the representativeness of sectarian elites is not necessarily as solid as it might look. For example, having undergone rapid demographic growth since the 1970s, Lebanon still maintains political representation based on its population census of 1932. As a result, the number of non-Christian seats in parliament is equal to that of Christians, even though Christians were estimated to total 38.2 per cent of voters and Muslims 61.6 per cent in 2011.[16] This means that certain electoral constituencies are under-represented while others are over-represented.[17] In short, by making organic change difficult (e.g. by allocating offices and resources based on regular independent population censuses), sectarian communities are in permanent competition to find loopholes and backdoors in the electoral system to achieve larger representation and political gains.

One way of doing this is by manipulating electoral laws to garner cross-confessional seats and control a larger proportion of parliament than the allotted sectarian quota. For example, Christian seats in southern electoral districts are elected by the majority Shi’a population and considered the Shi’as’ Christian seats. Such issues have been a source of contestation and explain why the previous parliament postponed national elections three times in five years as factions could not agree on an electoral law.

Strong symbolic narratives underpin such power distribution and conservation mechanisms. The Christians continuously refer to ‘preserving’ political power in order to mobilise their constituency because if Lebanon’s demographic shifts were reflected in the country’s electoral system, they would spell a loss of Christian influence. Simultaneously, Muslims have capitalised on under-representation in government to institutionalise a discourse of marginalisation and a narrative of staying relevant. In the 2018 parliamentary election, none of the confessional political parties ran with a policy programme but instead relied on the discourse of preserving sectarian identities. For example, the Lebanese Forces party more than doubled its seats from 2009 by positioning itself as the champion of Christian values and influence. Its success reflects how this discourse resonates with Lebanon’s Christian population,[18] while diverting attention away from good governance and effective party performance. Between 2009 and 2017, parliament failed to address citizens’ needs and priorities – with only 9 per cent of laws passed addressing socioeconomic concerns.[19] In fact, MPs have a different set of priorities than citizens. While 58 per cent of citizens highlighted socioeconomic challenges – such as unemployment, price increases, health, education, electricity, and water – as their main concerns, only 30 per cent of MPs shared these concerns.[20] Completing this paradox, in May 2018 almost half of Lebanon’s electorate voted for the same political parties as they had in 2009. Perhaps, inadvertently, they showcased the robustness of sectarian politics.[21]

Iraq’s incomplete consociationalism

In many respects, since 2003 Iraq’s political system has evolved along similar lines to Lebanon’s consociational democracy.[22] The new constitution, ratified in 2005, stressed that ‘Iraq is a country of multiple nationalities, religions, and sects’.[23] Unlike Lebanon’s corporate consociational system, which accommodates groups according to predetermined sectarian or ethnic criteria, Iraq’s liberal consociational system is based on democratic preferences.[24] As such, the principle of sectarian proportionality is not constitutionally enshrined. Article 49 of the Constitution states merely that ‘representation of all components of the people shall be upheld in parliament’. In practice, however, Iraqi consociationalism began to generate patterns and discourses similar to Lebanon’s, with the dominant positions of state being filled by Iraq’s main communities: the presidency by the Kurds, prime minister by the Shias, and the house speaker by the Sunnis.[25] The need to represent all communities extended beyond top-level appointments and the Iraqi government through the muhasasa system – the distribution of jobs between particular parties and coalitions within a given ethno-sectarian group based on a points system.[26] It should be noted, however, that Iraq’s consociational democracy centres on inclusive ethno-sectarian representation (distribution of posts) much more than on inclusive ethno-sectarian decision making (distribution of power). This means that both majority and minority groups can be excluded and allows for significant concentrations of real power that risk undoing any benefits of consociational governance. As with Lebanon, it generates serious challenges to the business of adequate public governance.[27] Below, we discuss three key mechanisms in Iraqi governance that can work to exclude other groups from power, despite their representation in government or the administration.

The first issue is that, according to article 76 (1) of the Iraqi constitution, the majority bloc has the right to form a government. This is followed by a confidence vote in the prime minister designate, which requires only an absolute parliamentary majority as per article 76 (4). These two provisions are non-consociational. First, the very fact that the largest bloc is automatically designated to nominate a PM undermines the need for bargaining between elites in a deeply divided society. However, since there is ambiguity as to how the largest bloc is designated, there is plenty of horse-trading to agree on criteria and procedure. In the last two elections (2014 and 2018), especially, this has involved cross-sectarian collusion.

Second, the possibility of winning a confidence vote by an absolute majority is problematic from a conscociational point of view because it implies that a major political group may form a coalition government with a number of insignificant groups and exclude other major ones. In practice, even absolute majorities are a tall order given the fragmentation of Iraq’s political blocs. The process of fragmentation has been witnessed in every electoral round since grand coalitions (now defunct) were formed in the 2005 elections. A compromise – the so-called Erbil Agreement – was reached in 2010, under which the main political parties agreed to form a grand coalition at the executive level with an understanding that ministries would be distributed among the main parties. Accordingly, Iraqiya (a coalition consisting of the Sunni National Dialogue Front, Shi’ite Ayad Allawi, and new nationalists) expected to receive the Ministry of Defence and the presidency of the Security Committee, while Maliki received the premiership. Nevertheless, after the formation of the government and parliament’s vote of confidence, Maliki renounced his commitment to the Erbil Agreement and turned down all the candidates that Iraqiya proposed.

A third issue arising from posts being shared on a sectarian basis, but power being exercised on a non-sectarian basis, is the broad authority it affords the prime minister. The constitution allows the PM to exercise wide-ranging executive powers, direct the general policy of the state, control Iraq’s security forces, and preside over the council of ministers.[28] The PM’s power is increased because communities and individual ministers have no executive veto, and there is no quorum to hold a cabinet session or take decisions. Moreover, the president and the PM can dismiss ministers if they do not follow the rules or carry out the wishes of the PM.[29]

This has had two serious effects on Iraqi politics. First, it enables the PM to engage in substantial abuse with potentially devastating effects. For example, during his five-year term as prime minister, Maliki built a personal power base in the security establishment and bolstered the electoral prospects of his Da’wah Party.[30] Secondly, such a concentration of power increases political competition for the office of PM, making forming a post-election coalition more difficult. Because Iraq uses a system of proportional representation, no one party is ever likely to gain a majority in an election. Therefore, a process of cross-party coalition building follows every election. In these negotiations, all parties compete for the position of prime minister because it is seen as the only position that matters. This zero-sum game leaves the country vulnerable to political instability after every election.

In recent years, political blocs have opted for a compromise ‘weak’ prime minister, one who does not threaten the interests of any of the large blocs. Adel Abdel-Mahdi, for example, was a compromise candidate between Sadr’s Sairoun and Ameri’s Fateh parliamentary blocs. Similarly, PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi is a compromise between the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi’as’ parliamentary blocs. The result is a weak government and a weak PM, neither or which have sufficient support from the political blocs and parties to counter corruption and attempt real reform.

Interim conclusion

The consociational systems of both Iraq and Lebanon demonstrate how political elites in both countries have developed a system that creates and maintains control over the main levers of governance on a sectarian basis. The key problem is less the fact that the state is ruled by an oligarchy, or by a consensus between sects, but rather that no one really rules. The state as a set of institutions is run by a semi-opportunistic collusive-cum-competitive interaction between various parties that emerged from conflict. All parties continuously deploy all possible means to keep the others in check via control over public resources and public institutions while jealously guarding their own prerogatives and social autonomy. Paralysis is both a feature and an output of the political system, in which self-preservation is valued over the need for reform. Sectarian mechanisms are valued above all else because it allows established parties continuous control over political processes and enables resource appropriation. The logic of sectarian-based power sharing produces lengthy political stalemates almost by default and makes long-term decision making a Herculean task. Typically, this leads to weak governments with limited political autonomy that are incapable of adequate public performance, let alone of innovating the state.