Political Theory of Societal Association and Nation-Building: Case of the Failed State of Lebanon

Abstract

Methodologically, the grounding of social science theory needs to use empirical evidence from histories of societies. This is the methodological connection of the disciplines of the social sciences to the discipline of history. In this fourth paper of a series on the failed state of Syria, we next focus on its neighbor of Lebanon, also a failed state. In this research, we further extend the theory of “political association” to include the concepts in “nation-building”—as “top-down or bottom-up structures” and as “national leadership” or “coalition leadership”.