We Have Found the Enemy, and It Is Us Protracted Social Conflict in Lebanon, an Introspective Examination

Abstract

This thesis explores how the institutionalization of identity politics in governmental practices has resulted in a protracted social conflict with cyclical eruption of violence in the Republic of Lebanon. I argue that the political effects of the sectarian wars of the 1800’s have caused religious identity to become the salient social and political marker within the post independence Lebanese polity. In that direction, the incorporation of religious identity in the founding documents of the Lebanese state has institutionalized incompatible social relations and in turn has resulted in a chronic crisis of legitimacy and cyclical eruption of violence.