Community policing in areas of limited statehood: The case of Lebanon

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the impact of community policing on democratic policing in conflict-affected areas of limited statehood with divisive politics by way of a case study of Lebanon from 2008 to 2016. It argues that community policing leads to unequal empowerment and that it reflects and reproduces the existing politics of the context in which it is applied rather than promoting democratic changes, as the proponents of community policing usually claim. Specifically, the analysis of two cases of community policing in Lebanon shows that it reflects policing aimed against perceived threats to the country’s consociational power-sharing arrangement and the sectarian balance on which it is based, namely Palestinian and Syrian refugees as outsiders who do not fit into consociational categories. The community policing projects in the Palestinian Nahr al-Bared camp and the urban Ras Beirut area of Beirut represent different contexts within Lebanon and so also show variation in the state’s intent behind, and approach to, community policing. Still, the similarity in outcome in both cases, policing of ‘outsiders’ as threats to the consociational order, suggests that community policing exhibits flaws independently of where, how, and why it is being applied.