Reprinted with permission from the Mideast Monitor
Although many factors have contributed to these cycles of conflict and compromise, incongruity between demographic and political balances of power has been a major driving force in all of them. The pursuit of more equitable and just political representation has figured as one of the most salient justifications for communal calls to arms. The demographic question remains as much a fundamental - if rarely highlighted - reference point of Lebanese politics as ever before.
Background
The Republic of Lebanon, defined by one of its chief architects as a "country of associated minorities," has long been governed by a succession of formal and informal power-sharing arrangements that divide executive and legislative power into sectarian allotments. A large majority of Lebanese belong to one of three main sects - Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims and Maronite Christians - with Greek Orthodox, Druze and over a dozen other groups comprising the rest.
Demographic and political representations have never fully overlapped under the Lebanese republic or its political antecedents. The closest overlap was perhaps the interconfessional municipal council (diwan) set up in Beirut in 1834, which was evenly divided between six Muslim and six Christian delegates (though Muslims were probably a slight majority). However, this parity was not observed in subsequent councils, from which the Druze remained entirely excluded.
The executive administrative council of the mutasarrifiyya (retrospectively known as "Petit Liban") that governed Mount Lebanon from 1861 to World War I did not reflect its large Maronite majority, which received only four of the twelve seats. This allotment emerged as a reflection not of demographic realities, but of the international balance of power, with the Druze now benefiting from their alliance with the Ottoman Porte and Britain in securing representation beyond their dwindling demographic weight.
When the end of World War I left France as the temporary colonial master of Lebanon, the political role of its historical Maronite Catholic allies was augmented accordingly. In contrast to the mutasarrifiyya, the First Lebanese Republic could claim only a slim Christian majority (and Maronite plurality) within its expanded borders by way of a politicized, skewed series of censuses conducted between 1922 and 1932. The resultant findings were rejected by all Muslim political leaders, most of whom still contemplated integrating Lebanon into a larger regional order governed by a Muslim majority.
Nevertheless, the 1932 census was taken as the primary benchmark and justification for the 1943 National Pact, which governed the allotment of executive and legislative power after Lebanon's independence. Under this informal arrangement, the presidency was reserved for Maronites and the premiership for Sunnis, while parliament seats were apportioned in a 6:5 ratio of Christians to Muslims. This division roughly corresponded to the census figures, but the main factor underlying the covenant was the financial and political clout each sect and constituency could marshal. The pact had emerged as a "partage de pouvoir" (sharing of the spoils) between Maronite and Sunni notables, represented by Bishara al-Khouri and Riad al-Sulh. The Shiites, economically and politically the weakest of the three largest sects, were not included at all until 1947, when the office of parliament speaker was tacitly reserved for them.
As the demographic balance shifted after independence, this power-sharing system was buffeted by external ideological challenges and internal political grievances. The brief 1958 civil strife pitted a predominantly Christian pro-Western front against a largely Muslim coalition enamored with Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser. Blending together zeal for Arab unity under Nasser with misgivings against the inordinate prerogatives of the Maronite presidency, Muslim demonstrators trampled the Lebanese flag in the streets of Tyre. Such ominous signs prompted one CIA analyst to conclude that "constitutional changes to make Lebanon a Moslem-governed country would become the armed rebels' minimum demand" unless the US expedited the advent of Gen. Fouad Chehab to replace an overbearing President Camille Chamoun, In the event, soon upon taking office, Chehab issued Decree 112, which mandated Muslim-Christian parity (munasafa) in all administrative positions as a provisional measure "for the sake of justice."
Nevertheless, demands for more radical political change continued to resonate deeply. The chairman of the pan-Islamist Najjada party, Adnan al-Hakim, called for the explicit abrogation of the National Pact and a rotating Christian-Muslim presidency just prior to the outbreak of the civil war in 1975. The latter was fueled in no small part by a Sunni bid (in league with armed Palestinian groups and Kamal Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party) to overturn Maronite political supremacy. Arguably, this domestic dispute came to increasingly reflect the interests of the external powers that armed and financed its combatants. Al-Nahar editor Ghassan Tueni famously - and somewhat apologetically - dubbed it "the war of the others."
Tueni would later coin a parallel phrase, "the peace of the others," to describe the 1989 Taif Accord. With the Americans largely preoccupied with winning allies for the First Gulf War, the regional external powers - chiefly the Syrians and the Saudis - acted as the godfathers of the accord's constitutionally mandated legislative Christian-Muslim parity and the stipulated reduction of the powers of the presidency. The new terms still did not correspond to demographic realities, but all major political forces came to accept them at least tacitly, if only at the behest of their outside patrons (including, eventually, Iran).
The Electoral System
While the Lebanese system specifies a fixed sectarian distribution of parliamentary seats, the representation intended by the quota is blurred by the fact that most candidates face a multiconfessional electorate, and many must contest districts in which their sect is not a majority. Those who win the handful of Sunni seats in predominantly Shiite south Lebanon, for example, are effectively beholden to Shiite politicians, while the Sunni vote is decisive in electing Christian and Shiite deputies of Beirut.
To be sure, this feature of the Lebanese electoral system has been praised insofar as mixed electoral districts mandate inter-confessional political alliances and, so the hope, advance national integration. A similar rationale also informed the 1989 Taif Accord's stipulation of large electoral districts (muhafazat) and the allusion to the ultimate goal of a single, national district (da'ira muwwahhada). In effect, however, the proverbial "politics of the notables" from the top, and the largely endogamous social segregation from below, both of which define Lebanese politics and society, stymie or exclude any non-(or multi) confessional, grassroots movements. This holds especially true within a winner-take-all election system, as opposed to a more broadly representative proportional (nisbi) system.
In addition, electoral districts can be gerrymandered to change how many of a given sectarian community's seats are embedded under the effective control of other communities. In the 1992 election, voters from other sects elected 36% of Christian deputies, whereas the vast majority of Shiite, Sunni and Druze deputies were elected primarily by their own confessional constituents. This "appointment" of Christian deputies in south Lebanon, Baabda-Alay, and other districts prompted many Christian leaders to call for smaller, more homogenous voting districts.
The drafting of a new electoral law has been a matter of contentious debate. In 2006, a commission headed by former Foreign Minister Fouad Boutros proposed a hybrid system in which 77 seats are filled through first-past-the-post/winner-take-all elections in small electoral districts (qadas), while 51 seats are filled through a proportional electoral system at the level of governorates. Significantly, the draft law also permits Lebanese citizens residing abroad to participate in the elections, lowers the voting age from 21 to 18 years, and establishes strict monitoring and spending caps for political campaigns.
Shortly after the draft was tabled in June 2006, the three main factions of the ruling March 14 coalition - Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's PSP, Saad Hariri's Future movement, and Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces - all vowed to prevent its ratification. Though a full-fledged public discussion never unfolded due to the ensuing paralysis of government, there has since emerged an across-the-board consensus amongst virtually all political parties towards accepting the single district qaza.
Be that as it may, even the most creative electoral engineering can ill avert the conundrum posed by the disequilibrium between political and demographic representation. How can each citizen be accorded the same rights when power is divided equally between a Muslim majority and a Christian minority? Because individual political representation is not perfectly equal even in principle, the growth of communal demographic grievances in one group or another is all but built into the system.
Current Demographic Trends
Sidestepping the inconsistency between individual and communal political representation, Lebanon has not conducted a census since 1932. Tellingly, even the most aggrieved Muslim opposition parties have usually shied from demanding one. The explosive potential of the assumed demographic-political incongruity is such that calling for a measurement is tantamount to threatening civil peace. This prolonged absence of an official census has only fed the intense speculation of the country's actual demographic makeup.
Before examining some of the (often conflicting and possibly politicized) statistical data published on this matter, it is important to recall that modern states carry out censuses for a reason - indirect methods of estimating the demographic makeup of a country are imprecise. Nevertheless, two major demographic trends can be discerned.
Emigration
The first trend is a disproportionately high rate of Christian emigration from the mid-nineteenth through the twentieth century, particularly during and after eruptions of civil strife in 1860, 1914-1918, and 1975-1990.
Over 900,000 Lebanese emigrated between the outbreak of civil war in 1975 and 2001 (about 45% during the last decade of Syrian tutelage). Although it was once assumed that a majority of these recent emigrants are Christian, one study estimates the percentage departure rates within each confession as 22% of Sunnis, 21% of Shiites, 21% of Maronites, 23% of Greek Orthodox Christians and 15% of Druze. A 2006 study conducted by the Lebanese Emigration Research Center at Notre Dame University (in Lebanon) found that emigration is equally sought by Muslims (59.7%) and Christians (61.3%), and for virtually the same socio-political reasons.
The available data thus raises questions about the longstanding assumption that the large majority of Lebanese citizens living abroad are Christians. This is politically relevant because a number of Christian politicians have called for the inclusion of absentee ballots in elections, believing that this would favorably alter the confessional profile of the electorate. Hoping to expand the prospective pool of expatriate Christian voters, MP Nimtallah Abi Nasr has gone further in campaigning for a (re)naturalization of second and third generation Lebanese abroad. Hezbollah has reportedly encouraged first-generation Shiite emigrants to register their children as citizens for much the same reason.
Fertility Rates
The second major Lebanese demographic trend is higher Muslim fertily rates. In 1971, Shiites showed the highest fertility rate of 3.8, followed by Sunnis (2.8), (Maronite and non-Maronite) Catholics (2), Druze (1.8) and non-Catholic Christians (1.7). By 1988, according to one projection, the percentage of Shiites in Lebanon had risen to 32%, while the number of Maronites had dwindled to 17% . Until very recently, projected estimates of a Shiite plurality as large as 40% were a staple of Western media.
However, data published by the Lebanese government in 1996 suggests that Sunni and Shiite fertility rates are now roughly equal. While the more cosmopolitan Sunnis of Beirut tend to have small families, the cumulative fertility rate (the average number of children born to married women) in the predominantly Sunni muhafaza of North Lebanon (4.2) is higher than in largely Shiite Nabatiyye (3.6) and the Beqaa (3.9).
In any event, projections based on fertility (and emigration) rates ignore a host of intervening variables. Lower infant and child mortality rates among Christians, for example, have counterbalanced higher Muslim birthrates to some extent. Most significantly perhaps, the highly controversial 1994 naturalization of over 160,000 Syrians and Palestinians tipped the sectarian balance in Lebanon in favor of Sunnis (which was one reason why the late Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri supported it).
Proxy Measures
Analysts have pursued other methods of estimating the waxing and waning of Lebanon's sectarian communities. The most widely cited reference is the list of registered voters published prior to the 2005 elections, which is 26.5% Sunni, 26.2% Shiite and 22.1% Maronite (lists published before the 1992, 1996, and 2000 elections display roughly the same proportions). However, voter registration records, known as "check lists" (lawaih ash-shatb), only include adults age 21 or older and thus do not take account of the disproportionately Muslim (and perhaps disproportionately Shiite) youth. Moreover, Lebanese citizens are automatically counted as registered voters irrespective of whether they have emigrated.
A recent study by Youssef Douwayhi, based on birth records (sijilat an-nufus) since 1905, estimates Shiite and Sunni demographic weight to be virtually equal (29.05% and 29.06%). Although this method includes Lebanese under the age of 21, it also fails to exclude Lebanese citizens who have emigrated.
Although a convergence of Sunni-Shiite birthrates is quite plausible (due to rapid Shiite urbanization, among other things), the fact that official data showing a Sunni "baby boom" was produced at the height of Hariri's power has been viewed with some suspicion. Similarly, prior to the civil war, public (Christian) officials had been accused of tampering with statistics to conceal the scale of Christian demographic decline.
Above and beyond the methodological problems inherent in almost all these demographic studies, obvious political implications can prejudice the accuracy and interpretation of statistical data. Case in point is the CIA, which has abruptly revised its own demographic estimates. In its 2004 edition, the CIA World Factbook had reported that Muslims and Christians constitute 70% and 30% of the population, respectively. Amid an intensified Israeli-American push to disarm Hezbollah, these numbers were conspicuously adjusted in the 2005 edition to reflect a highly improbable, precipitous decrease in the overall Muslim population to 59.7%, while the Christian population rose a sudden 9%.
Implications
While available statistical levies about Lebanese demographics must be deemed inconclusive (particularly regarding the resident population), there is good reason to question longstanding claims that the Shiite population of Lebanon significantly outstrips that of Sunnis and Christians.
Nonetheless, one preliminary conclusion is inescapable. As has been the case intermittently throughout its history, Lebanon's current power-sharing covenant is far out of step with demographic realities. Even the most conservative statistical conjectures leave Lebanese Muslims significantly underrepresented in the parliament and the council of ministers, an incongruity that will grow in the years ahead (According to the Douwayhi study, all Christians presently make up a mere 23.3% of Lebanese under the age of 20). Debate over the exact numbers misses the forest for the trees, as the prevalent ambiguity alone is sufficient to sustain acute perceptions of disenfranchisement among both Shiites and Sunnis, thereby providing another seedbed for external exploitation and indigenous radicalization.
In contrast to previous phases of political-demographic imbalances, however, none of the leading Lebanese political groups today are calling for an immediate upending of the constitution. Even Hezbollah, despite its official pursuit of the abolition of political sectarianism in principle, has refrained from insisting on amendments to better reflect Shiite demographic weight.
Indeed, insofar as Shiite socio-political disenfranchisement contributes to popular support for Hezbollah, the party's leadership may well be content with the current system for the time being. The mere insinuation of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah publicly calling for revised sectarian quotas (a demand that would be very difficult to drop once raised) sends shivers down the collective spine of the political establishment and is itself a powerful bargaining tool. Moreover, while the status quo puts an artificial cap on Shiite representation, it has allowed Hezbollah (along with the pro-Syrian Amal movement) to monopolize that representation. A deconfessionalized proportional electoral system, on the other hand, would open the doors of parliament for hitherto excluded secular Shiite currents.
Last but not least, the current electoral law and political alignments give Shiite minorities in the districts of Baabda-Alay and Zahle a critical swing vote. Ironically, the March 14 coalition owes its much vaunted parliamentary majority to its 2005 electoral alliance with Hezbollah, whose fatwa instructing Shiites to vote against Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) provided its margin of victory for the 11 seats of Baabda-Aley (the FPM and its allies narrowly won Zahle).
Branded by Walid Jumblatt as a mortal threat to Hezbollah's arms in 2005, Aoun subsequently forged an alliance with Hezbollah. This alliance stems at least partly from electoral considerations, as do his repeated calls for early parliamentary elections and a direct popular vote for president. Demography, he reckons, is now on his side.
Perhaps the main reason why calls for a revision of Taif remain muted is that Lebanese Christians are split between the Sunni-led March 14 coalition and the Shiite opposition, and both sides know that that raising the issue of political-demographic incongruity would antagonize their allies. Ironically, then, any initiative for an overhaul of Taif would have to be initiated by leaders of the Christian community - the very confession destined to lose the most from such a reform. With rival Christian leaders vying for the loyalty of their community, however, they cannot afford to be seen as chipping away at the last remnants of Christian privileges in the system. Even Aoun has put his own party's progressive, comprehensive deconfessionalization agenda on ice and instead seen cast himself as the communal guardian of a Christian community divested of its rights due in the post-Taif era.
Christian fears of Muslim demographic strength are reinforced by trepidation about the spread of radical Islamism (a sentiment shared by a great many secular Muslims in and beyond Lebanon). One reason why the political empowerment of Shiites is conflated with Hezbollah is that the latter has imposed a startling degree of conformity on the Shiite electorate. This was evident during the two-month Hezbollah-led boycott of the cabinet in the winter of 2005/2006, when prominent Shiite cleric Afif Nabulsi issued a fatwa prohibiting Shiites outside of Hezbollah and Amal from joining the government. Both Nasrallah and Amal leader Nabih Berri vociferously defended the fatwa and denounced any criticism of the fatwa as an "attack on the scholars of Islam."
This raises questions about whether Shiite empowerment attained through the agency of religious fundamentalists is healthy for democracy. Although Sunni Islamism (on display when demonstrators rampaged through the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafieh during the Danish cartoon controversy in February 2006, and most recently with the terrorism and revolt by Fatah al-Islam) is viewed with at least as much apprehension, the inchoate, dispersed makeup of militant Sunni movements in Lebanon renders them less likely to sweep to power through elections.
Conclusion
In view of the growing disequilibrium between demographic and political representation in Lebanon (and all of its associated pathologies), a recalibration of the Taif power-sharing formula along the lines of a tripartite division of power (muthalatha) among Christians, Sunnis, and Shiites is all but inevitable in the long term. Although a comprehensive deconfessionalization may be a better cure for Lebanon's ailments in principle, in practice those who hold positions of power under the sectarian system are not likely to promulgate its abrogation (even if they pay lip service to the idea as a long-term goal).
While a tripartite division of power may not correspond precisely with Lebanon's demographic balance, it is the closest possible approximation in the absence of a census (few dispute that Christians, Sunnis, and Shiites each constitute somewhere in the range of 25-35% of the population) and the only recalibration formula that could conceivably win the support of all three. So long as no one sect compromises a demographic majority (a situation that, barring a major cataclysm, is not likely to change even in the long term), few Lebanese would feel themselves egregiously underrepresented by a tripartite division of power (which, at any rate, already is nominally prefigured in the governing troika of president, premier and speaker).
However, while proposals to this effect have circulated for over two decades, a sweeping revision of the constitution is highly unlikely in the short term. Indeed, the main leaders of both March 14 and the opposition have explicitly rejected Sunni-Shiite-Christian tripartism as an alternative to Muslim-Christian parity - a position that perhaps has less to do with innate preferences than with the political exigencies of appealing to a deeply divided and anxious Christian community.
Trust between Sunnis and Shiites and between rival Christian political blocs - a sine qua non for any prospective reform of constitutional scope - has steadily eroded as a result of Lebanon's prolonged political standoff. Although the opposition controls 45% of parliament, March 14 leaders have balked at accepting a national unity cabinet in which they would lack the two-thirds majority needed to unilaterally make decisions. The exclusion from government of Lebanon's two leading Shiite parties and most popular Christian party has left the country's main political institutions in limbo (parliament has not convened since 2006).
Consequently, the ruling coalition and the opposition have looked to the street as an arena and force majeure arbiter of their contending claims. Whereas the massive March 14, 2005 demonstration - in which the FPM had played an integral, constitutive role - succeeded in prompting the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, the tit for tat subsequent shows of people power by both pro-government and opposition forces have only served to replicate deepening demographic and political bifurcations and prolong the ongoing paralysis. Wagering on the street in the present climate of economic stagnation and growing popular frustration carries the real risk of pushing the country towards the precipice of open civil strife.
The framing of a consensus in Lebanon has been further hampered by external conditions, such as the bloody sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq and - most importantly - the regional showdown between the US/Israeli/Saudi and Iranian/Syrian axes. Whereas the Taif accord was made possible by a Saudi-Syrian-American rapprochement, no such regional détente is in sight today. The Bush administration has repeatedly prodded March 14 to ignore opposition demands and go ahead with a unilateral "50 plus 1" election of the president, while the Syrians and Iranians have encouraged political brinksmanship by their allies in Lebanon. The strategic interests of the foreign patron states are such that the jostling Lebanese clients are being encouraged to forgo any concession at the cost of a domestic deadlock.
Ultimately, the looming threat of civil war and/or external domination can only be averted if concessions are made by both sides. Lebanon cannot properly function as a consociational democracy without a coalition government taking account of the vital interests and core concerns of the three major constituent communities of the country, each of which enjoys mutual veto powers, if not invariably de jure, then indubitably de facto.
Yet such a traditional, sect-focused analysis of the Lebanese predicament omits perhaps the most critical segment of Lebanese society. A case can be made that the most underrepresented constituency in Lebanon is not the Shiites, Sunnis, or Christians, but the considerable number of Lebanese who do not identify primarily with the sect or creed into which they are born (or particularly care how many seats it is allotted). Interestingly, the proportion of Lebanese who privilege their national identity over their confessional identity (34%, according to a 2005 survey) compares positively with virtually all Arab and Middle Eastern countries. If the strengthening of an inter-communal civic identity is the only exit out of the vicious cycles of confessional conflict, temporary compromise, and renewed contestation, then finally lending a voice and official, constitutional recognition to what Jawad Adra calls the "hidden third" of Lebanese society is one of the most sensible steps to secure Lebanon's future stability and prosperity.
Source: Mideast Monitor
Tags: Christians, Constitution, Elections, Lebanese
