The ‘neo-Weberian’ worldview, equating the state with formal institutions, is inadequate to describe the complex reality of power interactions that effectively make up the state in Iraq and Lebanon.
Has the state indeed disappeared, as many Iraqis and Lebanese would claim? Before seeking to answer this question, one should ask, what is a state? The most frequently used definition is Max Weber’s explanation: ‘A compulsory political organization with continuous operations will be called a state in so far as its administrative staff successfully uphold the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of force in the enforcement of its order.’
Although the definition was written 100 years ago, many Western academics, policy-based researchers and government officials continue to rely on it in their understanding of the state. These ‘neo-Weberians’ argue that the state is a central and formal authority that controls coercion and dominates populations. Theda Skocpol, who co-edited and wrote the introduction to the seminal book Bringing the State Back In, argues that the state is a ‘set of administrative, policing and military organizations headed, and more or less well co-ordinated by, an executive authority’.
According to the neo-Weberian worldview, the state is found in the formal institutions that govern society. Power, therefore, is embodied in institutions such as a parliament, government offices, the military (including a ministry of defence), the police and other government agencies. When these institutions are unable to perform their duties, the argument is that the state is ‘weak’, ‘fragile’, ‘failed’ or indeed absent.
Equally, in neo-Weberian terms the rest of society is deemed the ‘non-state’. Any entity – such as an armed group or civil society organization – that sits outside the formal institutions of governance falls into this category. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which operates in many so-called fragile state contexts, defines a non-state armed actor as ‘any armed group, distinct from and not operating under the control of, the state or states in which it carries out military operations, and which has political, religious, and/or military objectives’. Other observers have defined a non-state actor as ‘largely or entirely autonomous from central government funding and control: emanating from civil society, or from the market economy, or from political impulses beyond state control and direction’. The problem with such definitions is that they take for granted the neo-Weberian worldview. Many actors who hold political influence over a social base and who perform the duties of the state are still considered non-state under this rigid conceptualization.
However, in Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq and Lebanon, the activities of the state often spread from so-called ‘formal’ to ‘informal’ institutions. The line between state and non-state is blurred or grey, as armed groups, civil society organizations, and social leaders and their organizations all in effect act as the state, or perform activities usually associated with governments, such as collecting taxes, providing services, or granting freedom of movement across boundaries. Dispersed institutions and social networks take on the mundane processes of governance.
To better explain this reality and the grey area, some researchers have employed the term ‘hybrid’. Hybrid political orders arise, according to Boege et al., when:
Others have defined hybrid armed actors as those which are not completely in the formal government structure and which compete and cooperate with the government.
The use of ‘hybridity’ as a concept in explaining how power transcends government institutions (such as ministries or government agencies) and also inhabits non-government-recognized organizations reveals the blurred boundaries between the neo-Weberian state and non-state actors. However, it still stops short of challenging the fundamental premise. It does not question whether the neo-Weberian state/non-state model is itself appropriate. Such interpretations typically seek an explanation as to why, in some contexts, such as in Iraq and Lebanon, the model has not yet worked. In this way, scholars of hybrid political orders, while analysing the nuance of power and governance in complex settings, still engage with the neo-Weberian worldview where society and state remain independent, autonomous spaces.
Several ministers have confided to the authors of this paper that political parties and other actors – either operating directly or through proxies – interfere with policymaking and make decisions on behalf of particular ministries on issues ranging from contracting to personnel.
In the incoherent political contexts of Iraq and Lebanon, however, the two spaces become blurred. State power does not always reside in government institutions but is also derived from society. Often, government institutions rubber-stamp decisions after they have been made behind closed doors by other societal actors. Several ministers have confided to the authors of this paper that political parties and other actors – either operating directly or through proxies – interfere with policymaking and make decisions on behalf of particular ministries on issues ranging from contracting to personnel. In these cases, social forces outside government institutions seem to be more influential in the state than the institutions themselves, undermining the neo-Weberian premise.
While the concept of hybridity describes how the neo-Weberian line between state and non-state is blurred, it still accepts that society and state should be separate in an ideal or so-called ‘strong state’ scenario. In contrast, this paper shifts attention to the reality of the power system that makes up the de facto state in both Iraq and Lebanon. This system has proven resilient through economic crises, civil wars, mass uprisings and changes in government.
