Forms of regulation of physical violence in Lebanon since 1975

Abstract

With the outbreak of the Lebanese war in 1975 Lebanon became a symbol of a Hobbesian state of nature. For a period of 15 years militias and external forces took control over the streets. Physical violence regulating state-institutions vanished, the Lebanese state itself decayed. But simultaneously, new forms of regulation emerged: the Lebanese war created its own rules and its own forms of regulation of physical violence. As the article argues, Lebanon’s current order of violence is rather the consequence of the 15 years of war than the result of the 1990 proclaimed peace. Focussing on forms of regulation of physical violence, the article discusses the development of privatization of violence as well as the still unfinished development of regaining the state’s monopoly of physical violence.