Any analysis that is consumed with the supposed ‘failure’ of the state in Iraq and Lebanon overlooks the importance and resilience of social systems of power in both countries.
‘Ma fi dawla’ (there is no state). Anyone who has entered into political conversation with people from Baghdad or Beirut will undoubtedly have heard this expression. For years, the populations of both Iraq and Lebanon have suffered under successive governments that have been unable to provide basic necessities, such as regular supplies of electricity and water. These governments have consequently lost their authority to speak legitimately on behalf of their citizens. Disillusionment with the political system and the elite political class has pushed many Iraqis and Lebanese into feeling that their countries are effectively stateless.
Western policymakers dealing with the Middle East also engage with the concept of the state. Economic, political and security policies focusing on the region have often been formulated under the banner of state-building or reviving failed states. Yet such policies often conceptualize the state as something that consists merely of formal government institutions. As a consequence, policymakers often perceive the state to be absent.
Instead of arguing that the state does not exist or has failed, this paper uses the cases of Iraq and Lebanon to illustrate the workings of power systems that make up the state and society. In terms of horizontal power relationships among elements of the elite, vertical power relationships between the elite and citizens, and interactions between these two axes, the state in some form is very much present in both countries – even though it may not appear so to those who define the ‘state’ as a concept emerging from European history. As such, the paper highlights the centrality of society in the state in Iraq and Lebanon, and proposes a reconsideration of any policy definition of state power that separates the state from society.
The analytical basis for this approach was developed over the past two years during a Chatham House project in which the authors have engaged with academics – sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists – across the Middle East with an eye to understanding their perceptions of the state, its form and its role. In particular, the paper challenges the ‘neo-Weberian’ institutional model of the state and any related attempt to explain the grey area between state and non-state entities through the concept of ‘hybridity’. That model does not capture the complex essence of power and public authority in countries such as Iraq and Lebanon. Critically, a narrow focus on formal institutions of state power also leads to false predictions of state failure or collapse. As a consequence, there is a need in the policy arena to study and rethink the nature and role of the state.
This paper holds the state to be the political system within which actors compete for power. Power is not fixed and does not only exist in official institutions. It takes the form of a constant process of competition and cooperation between diverse societal actors such as political parties, armed groups, social leaders and civil society. The dynamics of this system are similar in both Iraq and Lebanon: a variety of actors all cooperate within the ‘state’ (broadly defined) and compete for control of its institutions and its resources.
