Matt Yglesias

A Bicameral Solution for Lebanon

Parliament Building, Beirut, Lebanon (wikimedia)

Pretty much everyone agrees that Lebanon could stand to move to a less sectarian basis for its politics. But at the same time, those who benefit from current arrangements don’t want to change them. What’s needed is a moderate proposal, a compromise that would let confessional elites preserve a lot of their power while also acting to make the country better-governed, thus making their power more worth having. Elias Muhanna offers up the sensible notion of bicameralism as possibly fitting the bill:

It is a system that would seem tailor-made to address the confessional deadlock that has paralysed governance in Lebanon. In Beirut’s bicameral legislature, the Chamber of Deputies would be elected without confessional quotas, while the Senate – with seats divided along confessional lines – would serve as the explicit guarantor of minority rights. Sequestering confessional interests in a dedicated institution would allow the Chamber of Deputies to be transformed from a marketplace of sectarian bartering into the primary locus of political authority whose constituent was the citizen, irrespective of his or her religion.

This seems like a good idea to me. It also casts our own Senate in stark relief. Like Muhanna’s proposed Lebanese Senate, the American Senate was, at the time, a politically useful compromise that allowed something useful to be accomplished. The lack of a workable federal decision-making process was creating a lot of practical problems. At the same time, the absence of a workable federal decision-making process was beneficial to political leaders from small states. Bicameralism, with the people represented in the House and the states-as-such represented in the Senate solved the problem and allowed the country to govern itself better. It did not, however, allow the country to govern itself better than it could have been governed had not the small states blocked a better system. But given the level of sentimental attachment people had to their states at that time, and the states’ tradition of autonomy, and the background of the Revolution and the Articles of Confederation, a better system wasn’t possible.

That, however, was over 200 years ago.

The Obama Effect Abroad

An incredulous Cliff May offers up what I guess he takes is a reductio ad absurdum argument:

Over on Contentions, Jennifer Rubin notes the column by Eugene Robinson contending that Obama’s Cairo speech led to the encouraging results in Lebanon’s elections.

I wonder: Does Robinson also believe that Obama’s visit to Buchenwald led to the right-wing victories in the European elections?

Look. Obviously the things that Barack Obama says and does are not going to be the main factor in foreign electoral outcomes. But insofar as the relationship with the United States is an important consideration for many countries, then it seems plausible to conjecture that the basic posture of the US President will have some systematic impact. In particular, it seems totally plausible to speculate that a more popular American president who engages with the views of foreigners is going to reduce the appeal of political movements that are skeptical of the United States and increase the appeal of movements that are more friendly to US influence. Both the March 14 Coalition in Lebanon and the European People’s Party fit the “more friendly to US influence” bill.

March 14 Coalition Triumphant in Lebanon

The ruling March 14 Coalition, heirs to the Cedar Revolution, have somewhat unexpectedly carried the day in Lebanon. This is being reported as a defeat for Hezbollah, since Hezbollah was (and is) the main party in the opposition. But Hezbollah’s actual level of electoral support is unchanged. Instead, as I said the other day, the key player was Michael Aoun and his Free Patriotic Movement. Aoun, a Christian, had aligned himself with the Hezbollah-led coalition. But he ultimately wasn’t able to carry enough of the Christian vote to put the opposition in power.

Since the March 14 Coalition is pro-Western in its orientation, this counts as a win for US foreign policy. At the same time, it’s not actually clear to me how anyone’s life in the United States is actually impacted by Lebanese electoral politics and my general sense is that it’s not wise to get too invested in these kind of proxy struggles. The fundamental issue of Hezbollah’s role in Lebanese society will, one suspects, remain unresolved as Hezbollah has no intention of surrendering its weapons and it seems it will still be the case that the Lebanese government isn’t going to be willing or able to forcibly disarm it.

What’s Really Happening in Lebanon?

The tendency, when Americans focus on the upcoming Lebanese elections, is to see the conflict between the ruling March 14 Coalition and the opposition as a fight that’s all about Hezbollah. In reality, nobody can get anywhere in Lebanon without some kind of coalition, and the pivotal figure in determining the outcome will in many ways be Michael Aoun, a Christian. Elias Muhanna explains in a great piece for The National:

If the opposition prevails on June 7, headlines around the world will read “HIZBOLLAH WINS” even though the Shiite party is likely to hold no more seats in parliament than the dozen or so that it occupies today. It will, in fact, be the gains of the Free Patriotic Movement – and the affiliated parties of its Change and Reform Bloc – that will push the opposition into the majority, giving Aoun and his allies control of the largest block of seats in parliament.

Analysts and commentators have produced millions of words in an attempt to understand Hizbollah and its intentions, but Aoun and his movement have been overlooked. The FPM touts its ambitious and sweeping reform agenda, but the party – which sent representatives to parliament for the first time in 2005 – has only a brief track record in government and a leader renowned for his mercurial behaviour. Predicting the country’s course after the election is impossible, but it is clear that Michel Aoun and the Free Patriotic Movement are poised to play a major role – one that will test the party’s sincerity and determination to reform what it regards as a weak and ineffectual state.

The whole piece is very interesting. Not sure it has a quick “takeaway” conclusion, but the point I would emphasize to people looking at western press coverage of these events is that Lebanese politics is much more complicated than a black hats versus white hats struggle between Hezbollah and “the good guys.”

Post-Cedar Lebanon

Thanassis Cambanis, who’s covered the Middle East for The Boston Globe and The New York Times, has an original commentary out for Middle East Progress on how to deal with the new Lebanese realities rather than the fantasies of the Cedar Revolution:

In short, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran are stronger in Lebanon that any point in the last decade. In order to foster better ties with a Lebanese government that includes Hezbollah as well as the pro-Western coalition, U.S. policy makers should consider building stronger relations with ambiguous Lebanese politicians who must deal with Hezbollah as a practical matter. And Washington might have to make a thorny choice: find a way to deal with a government dominated by Hezbollah, or else cut off all ties and relations with one of the few states in the Middle East where a real battle of ideas has been joined. The dialogue in Lebanon is no less critical because of the struggle between Hezbollah, which maintains its own independent military, and those who want the state at last to exercise a real monopoly on security.

It will no doubt be awkward to find a way to forge relations with a state that has at its center a group defined as terrorist by Washington and several European countries including Britain, and which remains in a state of war with Israel, America’s closest Middle East ally. But more complex political quandaries have been resolved, and in this case the formula will probably involve Americans talking directly to independents that have close ties to Hezbollah, rather than party officials themselves.

To add an obvious addendum to this, clearly policy toward Lebanon will be impacted by whether or not the United States chooses to aggressively pursue the seemingly promising possibility of Israel-Syria peace talks. But it seems to me that this kind of approach to Lebanon would be a useful complement to an approach to Syria.