‘Elite bargains’ are championed as a means of stabilizing conflict-affected states. But they have not led to a sustainable peace and overlook less visible, structural forms of violence inflicted on the population.
Attempts at controlling violence and instability have long been at the heart of international peacebuilding efforts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). To achieve this end, the US, the UK and other like-minded governments (mostly referred to in this paper as ‘policymakers from the Global North’) have either focused on stabilization policies that promote political settlements based on the concept of ‘elite bargains’, or failed to deliver the ‘inclusive’ forms of negotiations that their strategies target.
Elite bargains are defined as agreements that incentivize leaders in a conflict to lay down arms and govern under a power-sharing political system. This concept has become central to stabilization policies, and more broadly, to the approach of international policymakers and organizations engaged in conflict management across the world. But while these elite bargains have, in many cases, successfully reduced direct, inter-elite violence, they have perpetuated other forms of violence and fuelled political systems that enable corruption and serve elite interests over those of the population.
In Iraq, Lebanon and Libya, such agreements among elites emerging from wars have failed to bring stability to the everyday lives of the people. Instead, the harms and hardships have led many Iraqis, Lebanese and Libyans to protest against their countries’ elites, and to call for an end to the very political settlements that were meant to stop violence.
The settlements agreed in Lebanon, Iraq and Libya became the basis of long-lasting governing systems, incentivizing consensus among elites to the detriment of the wider population.
The settlements agreed in Lebanon after 1989, Iraq after 2003 and Libya after 2011 were intended as short-term measures to halt direct violence. But instead, they became the basis of long-lasting governing systems, incentivizing consensus among elites to the detriment of the wider population. In Lebanon, the 2019 protest movements did not demand the removal of a specific political party or the incumbent government. They did not base their grievances along the ethno-sectarian lines that underpinned the political system. Instead, those movements came together across those lines to call for an end to the settlement itself. During the protests, demonstrators chanted ‘all of them means all of them’ (in Arabic, killon yaani killon). Similarly, in 2019, Iraqis taking part in the ‘Tishreen’ (‘October’) uprisings called for an end to their country’s political system (known locally as muhasasa), which is also based on an ethno-sectarian power-sharing and was imposed in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion.
In both Iraq and Lebanon, the political settlements designed to end violence in fact propped up governing systems that harmed the lives of their people. But when people rose up against their country’s political settlement, they were met with violence – designed this time not for civil war but to maintain corrupt, authoritarian orders. In Iraq, for instance, armed actors killed over 600 and wounded more than 30,000 Tishreen protesters.
Evidence suggests that similar dynamics are now emerging in Libya. In March 2023, Libya’s Government of National Unity issued a circular that sought to revoke the legal registration of all civil society organizations formed since 2011. Meanwhile, arbitrary arrests of activists and those criticizing the corruption of political elites are on the rise.
In all three countries, the systems have become resilient enough to violently suppress contentious politics. In other words, while the political settlements championed by international actors have steered these elites from fighting each other, they have turned their violence against the population at large.
While data shows that elite bargains have lowered the number of deaths from direct violence in each of the three reference countries, human development indicators reveal a different story – one in which the lives of ordinary people have not been improved. Instead, the political settlements have failed to reduce high levels of corruption or to improve poor human development statistics. Corruption has meanwhile become an invisible killer.
International policy in these contexts has been predicated on prioritizing stability ahead of accountability. While elite bargaining is intended to be an ongoing process of negotiation rather than a singular ‘grand’ bargain, efforts are often not sustained. Instead, policymakers and policy-oriented academics have repeatedly prioritized the maintenance of the status quo, because they fear that pursuing an alternative could spark a return to violent clashes or even to civil war. But the compromise of one form of stability – via short-term agreements – has in practice entrenched unrepresentative political systems that are underpinned by corruption and deprive people of essential services. Such captured political systems are inherently more likely to lead to outbreaks of direct violence due to the inequalities that they produce.
This research paper illustrates how elite bargains in the MENA region – with specific reference to Iraq, Lebanon and Libya – have transformed violence within political systems from primarily direct and inter-elite conflict into less visible, more structural forms.
As international attention turns away from the MENA region, the paper proposes an approach that could help policymakers from the Global North focused on conflict management. This approach is centred on increasing accountability and includes working with reform-oriented individuals who are technically capable and therefore indispensable in their roles across state and society. The nature of bargaining with and among elites means that such individuals often work in silos, reducing the potential impact of their work, and leaving them feeling isolated and less able to effect change. However, increasing connectivity between those individuals and building their capacity to act can contribute to improving accountability and producing public goods through the auspices of the state. Ultimately, the approach put forward in this paper seeks to minimize violence via more inclusive political settlements that also address the daily harms caused by violence in all its forms.
