Political Change and the Outbreak of Civil War: The Case of Lebanon

Abstract

Although the Lebanon of post 2005 is similar in many respects to the Lebanon of the 1950s and 1970s, this article demonstrates that between 2005 and 2011 the country was in less danger of the outbreak of civil war than in 1958 or in 1975. The political circumstances that prevailed in 1958 and in 1975 had made the outbreak of a civil war in the interest of political actors. The introduction of some of the reforms introduced by the Taif Accord since 2005 made many actors more likely to use constitutional methods to resolve conflicts. When these methods failed, the protests were either peaceful or violent, but over short periods of time. On many occasions these protests brought the country to the brink of civil war. Nevertheless, these protests did not escalate into large-scale or long-term communal militant violence. This was not because of a sense of war weariness but because of the influence of the prevailing political circumstances that made the outbreak a civil war appear to be a strategic error.