Section II: Societal Changes in Light of the Parliamentary Elections

Chapter 9: The 1992 - 1996 Legislature: The Story of Stalemate
Fares Sassine

This chapter examines the role of parliament in a system which prevents it from carrying out its most important political function, which is the withholding of confidence from the government.

A majority of the population expressed their discontent with the 1992-1996 parliament; its legitimacy was further undermined by some deputies who criticized the electoral law and conditions under which it arose.

The inactivity of a constitutional court during most of the period meant the lack of an arbitrator in political struggles between the executive and legislative authorities.

The chapter treats the political stalemate which resulted: due to the regional need for stability in the country, parliament could not be dissolved, and could not in turn bring down the government by withholding confidence.

Under the troika system, conflict between institutions was in fact between the figures who headed them, and the chapter takes up the various tug-of-war battles over issues such as the audio-visual media law, the extension of president Elias Hrawi's mandate, parliament's agenda, and the budget.

Finally, the chapter examines the other functions that the legislature can assume in such a system, such as electing members of supervisory and other bodies including the constitutional council and the national audio-visual media council, carrying out supervisory functions itself, producing and passing legislation, and (parliamentary diplomacy -- or mediation -- among all political and other segments of a politicized society.

Chapter 10: A Scene After the Election Battle: New Elites, and Alternative Elites
Joseph Bahout

Studies of elites in political science have alternatively taken two paths. The first is rather quantitative, and it focuses on the composition of the elite and of its members. The second is qualitative, and it looks further to the process of recruitment of the elite. This chapter mainly follows the first method. It aims at drawing lines of continuity and change in the broad patterns of the parliamentary elite produced by the 1996 elections. It also sheds some light on former legislatures, mainly those of 1992, 1991, and 1972.

The first part of the chapter deals with the profiles of the new deputies. It shows that, although the average age of the Lebanese parliamentarian has remained more or less the same (around 52 years old), there was an increase of the number of young deputies (those under 35) as well as an increase of the number of old deputies (those over 65). Moreover, the fact that the first group is mainly constituted by Muslim-especially Shia-politicians and the second by Christians -mainly Maronites- underlines contrary generational dynamics within the country’s two major confessional political groups. A second parameter, that of occupational or professional background, adds significance to the first remark. Indeed, it points to the fact that the greater number of political “professionals”, i.e. party cadres and full-timers- are to be found among the ranks of younger deputies and in those of the Shia community (Amal and Hizballah). On the other hand, if the Lebanese parliament remains an assembly of businessmen, lawyers, and members of other “liberal” professions, some new professional profiles have recently stepped into political life, like those of university professors, school teachers, and journalists. This apparent “middle-class” component of the Lebanese legislature can also be seen in the universities and academic institutions from where the elite graduated; a growing number of deputies have studied at the Lebanese or the Arab University, and some in Eastern Europe.

The second part of the chapter focuses on some aspects of elite renewal, circulation, and cooptation. While the 1992 elections witnessed the highest rate of renewal by Lebanese standards (around 80%), this ratio falls to around 35% in the 1996 elections. The explanation is complex and has to do firstly with the fact that the previous round (1992) was held after a very long period of interruption (20 years) and thus prevented new elites from “naturally” entering the system. A second factor involves the increase in the number of seats. In terms of resilience, we notice that out of the pre-war parliament of 1972, 15 deputies are back in 1996, 11 of which having kept their seats throughout the period. The other four are all Christian deputies who opted out in 1992 because of the electoral boycott. On the other hand, 25 of the appointed parliamentarians in 1991 were re-elected in 1996, among whom 24 kept their seats through the 1992 elections. When looking at the distribution of the new deputies of 1996, one notices that it is significantly uneven among regions and communities. Both Beirut and the Sunni community are the realm of an important elite circulation, which could point to a “Hariri effect”. Meanwhile, the South and the Shia community are more stagnant; the high level of circulation here probably occurred in 1992. In absolute terms, however, the Druze community remains the most closed in term of circulation. Finally, circulation is low in the Maronite community, due to the enduring boycott, and also to the inefficiency of the community’s political parties, which were supposed to be the vectors of mobility and ascent.

Chapter 11: Challenges to the Parliamentary Elections Within the Constitutional Council
Suleiman Taqieddine

This chapter discusses the 19 challenges to the results of the 1996 round submitted to the Constitutional Council. It begins with the historical background to election challenges, which in 1996 were handled by the Constitutional Council for the first time; since this function had been under the jurisdiction by a parliamentary committee, the creation of a separate body to look into challenges had long been a demand by politicians and others.

It discusses the several pieces legislation at work in the process of settling disputes over election results. Article 31 of the 1993 law creating the Constitutional Council stipulates that the council has the power to annul election results and correct the result by declaring a winner; in 1996, this was not done in the four challenges which were accepted.

The author identifies the reasons for accepting challenges, for the most part, as involving errors and violations of the vote-counting process, such as the failure to count the votes from certain polling stations, the lack of signatures on certain vote tally reports, vote tally reports lacking the name of the polling station or its officials, etc. When the violations together were seen to have been serious and sufficient to significantly alter the results, the challenge was accepted.

The chapter also discusses the many reports of political pressure exerted on members of the Constitutional Council, especially its vice-president Salim Azar, while its president, Wajdi Mallat, resigned without publicly explaining his reasons for doing so. It discusses the Council’s failure to accept challenges in almost several cases where violations not involving vote tallies were seen to have been obvious (failure to resign from public office, violation of declaration of candidacy requirements). It cites the independent reports of wide-scale violations that took place in all electoral districts, without exception.

Chapter 12: The Role of Political Parties: Marginalization and Disequillibrium
Antoine Messara

This chapter outlines the negative repercussions which the 1996 elections had on political parties in Lebanon and on the level and impact of their representation in parliament.

The first part of the chapter describes the status of political parties in Lebanon. They are described as being divided and are divorced from their principles, or what is left of them, and experience internal agitation by reformist and rebellious movements. They exited the war with a purported willingness to develop, but failed to carry out a self-criticism, or an analysis of their relations and their roin a society undergoing reconstruction.

In the secpart, the chapter describes how the 1996 elections have marginalized the parties and disturbed the balances in representation. It notes that some Christian-based parties boycotted the elections, while others participated; yet in both cases the results were unfavorable. This part also states how the candidates who were members of political parties did not assert or stress their party affiliation in the campaign so that they could gather and gain votes of various constituencies in the framework of an expanded electoral district, which worked against and which was not favorable to mono-confessional parties.

The chapter concludes with an observation about the limited participation of associations and unions in the elections. The emergence of familialism in certain districts is explained by the limited territory and the absence of elected municipal councils, which can act as one of civil society’s means of restraining the power of the central government to intervene in local affairs.

Chapter 13: Electoral Obligations and Behavior: Civic Dimensions and Political Participation
Abdo Qai’

This chapter is more a type of questioning and an analysis than it is a quantitative piece of research on the 1996 parliamentary round. The questions asked in it center around the nature of the political commitment which gives a meaning to electoral behavior up-stream, and the dynamics of civism which shapes it down-stream.

The components of this questioning can be summarized as follows:

What are the civic dimensions of electoral behavior, and how may they be identified? What is the status of political commitment in these dimensions? How can we move from political commitment to the voting process through the process of civism or of civic-minded behavior? What are the roles played by political parties in making the civic role an active one, and how do these roles become concrete in the elections? How do parties approach salient problems of today’s societies? How can they help in tightening social bonds and through which type of political confrontation?

The analysis in this article makes use of these questions in the study of the citizen’s electoral behavior during the parliamentary elections of 1996. It particularly focuses on the elements we drew from the studies and research conducted on Lebanese civil society during the last decade.

This inquisition and analysis helped in:identifying the salient problems which can be raised in today’s societies;noting the importance of the discrepancy between the methods of political confrontation which regulate relations among political parties and the nature of these problems;sketching the various types of societal formations in the modern world, based on socio-economic disparities, cultural interactions, and the forms of political commitment within the respective societies. categorizing the various types of social developments currently in force in Lebanon, and the various types of electoral behavior that they favored during the most recent parliamentary election round.

Chapter 14: Women and Politics in Lebanon in the 1996 Elections
Margaret Helou

This chapter investigates the various actors and factors at play in determining the extent and nature of Lebanese women’s participation in politics. Adopting the broad definition of “political action,” the first part scans women’s involvement in the various forms of formal and informal political activity. In the parliamentary elections, results showed that the highest levels of participation are in the areas of campaigning and voting .

Being aware that electoral behavior is not necessarily an indicator of women’s participation in politics in general, the second part investigates the various social, political, and economic factors influencing the level of women’s participation in politics in general.

The various hypotheses suggested are based on:

1. interviews conducted with a small sample of politically active women, and

2. a review of the literature on the topic.

The third part of the chapter reports the findings of a research survey conducted on a sample of 299 women (originally 500) which aimed at testing the hypothesis suggested in part two and depicting women’s role and attitudes toward politics.

While many of the suggested hypotheses found support in the results, the chapter highlights various questions that remain to be answered by researchers before definite conclusions can be reached.

Chapter 15: The Role of the Media
Melhem Chawool

The chapter reviews the media’s strategies and behavior during the 1996 legislative elections. Based on interviews with media representatives and decision-makers, this chapter outlines the policies and special arrangements in terms of coverage made by both the print and audio-visual media during the elections.

The second part of the chapter provides an account of a systematic follow-up study, monitoring the frequency of TV appearances of candidates in power, participating opposition candidates, and the boycotting opposition. This monitoring was carried out during the course of the election period; from August 1 till September 20, 1996.

The third part of the chapter describes the role of the media in its dissemination of a democratic culture, and the broadcasting of information that shed light on electoral events and provided citizens with the necessary information to help them in making choices.

The conclusion established that while the print media carried out its task in a more or less acceptable way, the audio-visual media’s performance fell short when, under such circumstances, it could have played a larger and more influential role.

Chapter 16:Electoral Machines: Unequal Battles and Traditional Roles
Dima Sader

This chapter shows that the work of the electoral machines during the 1996 parliamentary elections was characterized by the adoption of traditional roles and the absence of equal opportunity in electioneering. This chapter first defines the concept of an “electoral machine” and then presents the social, political, economic and legal frameworks which affected the roles of electoral machines and helped in the emergence of inequality of opportunity in campaigning. Finally, the chapter compares and contrasts different electoral machines in terms of roles, organizations, budgets and expenses.

An electoral machine is an organized team of people working for the election of a candidate by trying to influence the voter through the use of different channels (media, favors, speeches, programs, money), and by using human and material capacities for this end. This chapter, however, portrays the specific roles and functions of those teams in the Lebanese context. The chapter shows how the dominance of patron -client relationships between candidates and voters affected the functions of the electoral machines by orienting them toward offering favors and rewards to the voter. The emergence of capitalists and businessmen in the political field gave prominence to the role of money in politics. As a result, huge machines with huge budgets were formed. All of this took place in a legal environment in which campaign advertising was technically prohibited but campaign finance rules were absent. It is within this context that Lebanese electoral machines functioned. 

While sharing the same tasks, elecoral machines differed in organization, budgets and expenses. In terms of roles, each machine tried first to carry out a statistical survey in order to approximate its popular support. Then, in order to communicate directly with the voter, an electoral district was usually divided into different regions, each one headed by a person whose responsibility it was to organize visits for the candidate, provide delegates for poiling stations, and coordinate the process of transportation and logistical needs. In addition, advertising was used through interviews on TV, campaigns in newspapers and the production and hanging of candidates’ pictures and banners in the streets. In addition, candidates used their political platforms to appeal to voters. Finally, electoral machines depended on fraud or force to defeat their adversaries.

The chapter also provides a deof three types of electoral machine organizations. The first one depended on a party organization (Hizbollah); the second developed from an institutional nucleus (Issam Fares); and the third lacked any previous organization and formed itself a short time before elections (Salim al-Hoss and Misbah al-Ahdab). Budgets ranged from $75,000 to $30 million. Differences in budgets were reflected in differences in expenses which were allocated to transportation, the media, food, offices, and salaries.

In conclusion, the chapter establishes that by trying to conduct an empirical approach to the work of electoral machines, one can conclude that the absence of legal guarantees of equal opportunity, the dominance of patron-client relationships, and the prominence of money in politics made electioneering in Lebanon an unfair battle characterized by traditional roles and functions.

Chapter 17: Democracy in Lebanon: Between Political Science and the Elections of 1996
Paul Salem

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of modern political science, emphasizing that the democratic system has proven to be a generally more effective and stable system of political management than rival systems in the second half of the 20th century. The author argues that politicians in Lebanon consider politics to be a matter of force and fraud, and a matter of personal cleverness and insight, and that they do not realize or respect the degree to which politics and government have become advanced fields of knowledge. The conclusion in this section is that democracy is not simply an ideal that some people cling to, but an advanced system of reliable public management; and that building democracy in Lebanon is not an idealist’s dream but a realistic necessity.

Then the author identifies a number of areas in which there remains a great democratic deficit in Lebanon. Among them are the following: (a) democracy assumes self-government, and this is clearly absent given the wide Syrian influence on the political process in Lebanon. (b) Democracy assumes the accountability of elected officials, whereas in most cases former militia leaders, confessional leaders, and large capitalists are manufacturing support for themselves through pressure, influence, and money. ( c) Democracy assumes the separation of public from private interests among high officials, and this is clearly absent given the deep involvement of high government officials in massive real estate deals, import monopolies, government contracting and the like. (d) Democracy assumes a measure of clean government, whereas the reality in Lebanon is public corruption on a massive scale from the highest to the lowest levels with no serious program to combat it. (e) Democracy assumes a measure of decentralization and local involvement, while in Lebanon local elections have been postponed repeatedly since 1963 and the central government withholds municipal funds from the municipalities. (f) Democracy assumes a strong and protected civil society, while the government has pursued a policy of limiting civil society freedoms and activities and co-opting other sections of it wholesale. (g) Democracy assumes a free press; in Lebanon the printed press is heavily bought into by government officials and practices self-censorship, while the audio-visual media were “reorganized” in such a way that the majority of television and radio stations came under the ownership of high government officials. (h) Democracy assumes an independent judiciary, whereas the judiciary in Lebanon is under the effective control of the executive branch of government and suffers from heavy-handed administrative and political interference. (I) Democracy assumes the development of an effective party system, while in Lebanon the remaining political parties are reconstructed confessional militias and there is no effective government effort to develop an national democratic non-confessional party system.

The last section of the article deals with the parliamentary elections of 1996 and examines the following issues: (a) the shortcomings of the election law of 1996 and possible alternatives to it; (b) the problems of giving the task of administering the elections to the Ministry of Interior headed by a candidate and the alternative proposal of establishing a National Electoral Commission; ( c) the problem of the abuse of money in the elections and the need for law electoral finance law; (d) the need for election monitoring and the role of civil society in that; (e) the hardly perceptible role of political parties in the 1996 elections and the need to develop a more effective party system; (f) electoral behavior and the need to invest in voter education and consciousness-raising.