Lebanon's Second Republic: Prospects for the ... - I-Epistemology

116 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:1
homeland to suffer the lack of the emigrants’ contribution to society at the
same time that their wives and children suffered the absence of their husbands
and fathers” (p. 139). I think that this is still going on in many parts
of the Muslim world. The difference may be that the sultans at that time
were more progressive than Muslim leaders today, because in the early
1920s attempts were made to limit the display of material wealth in order
to protect the poorer native population. For instance, silk and decorated
clothing and certain pieces of jewelry could be worn in public only on special
occasions. They even regulated the wedding parties and the number of
celebration parties that the returning emigrants could hold!
In summary, Boxberger has provided us with an exemplary piece of
history from a dynamic part of the Muslim world. And, as we all know,
without history the future will be much more complicated.
Soumaya Pernilla Ouis
Human Ecology Division, Lund University
Lund, Sweden
Lebanon’s Second Republic:
Prospects for the Twenty-First Century
Kail C. Ellis, ed.
Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2002. 236 pages.
It has now been over a decade since Lebanon’s long civil war ended.
Indeed, the new constitutional structures that emerged from the war –
Lebanon’s second republic – will soon have a longer life than the war
itself. This book examines both the depth and sustainability of Lebanon’s
new-found stability and brings together both academics specializing in
contemporary Lebanese affairs as well as several Lebanese professionals.
It is divided into three sections: Lebanon’s future in the context of the
Middle East peace process, questions of sectarianism and identity within
Lebanon, and selected questions relating to social justice and economic
performance in the postwar world. The book is also flanked by an introduction
and an epilogue written by Ellis.
The volume first examines the regional and global contexts in which
Lebanon finds itself. Modern Lebanon has always been vulnerable to
external interference in its affairs. Hafeez Malik argues that in the nineteenth
century, it was the competition between the great powers that led to

Book Reviews 117
the creation of Lebanon’s religiously based sectarian political system,
which was a departure from the longstanding reliance on tribal networks
as a way of structuring political life. In the twentieth century, paralleling
this global competition for power, now articulated through cold war logic,
was the emergence of fierce competition for regional hegemony between
Nasserism, Palestinian nationalism, and Israeli irredentism, all of which
penetrated, destabilized, and eventually contributed to the breakdown of
the Lebanese polity.
This book clearly states that today, these destabilizing regional and
global influences have subsided for the time being and have been replaced
by American acquiescence to Syrian hegemony over Lebanese affairs. In an
interesting article on Israeli-Lebanese relations, Kirsten Schulze adds Israel
to the list of powers acquiescing to this geo-strategic situation, having, in
effect, abandoned any larger projects aimed at fostering the creation of a
Christian ministate to its north. As Ellis stresses, however, Lebanon’s resultant
stability remains grounded in uncertainty, since it is a hostage to
progress in the region’s overall peace process.
The second part focuses on Lebanon’s cultural and religious heritage.
The contributors argue that sectarian identities have become more
entrenched in the postwar world. Paul Nabil Sayyah’s article explains this
phenomenon with respect to the increasing challenges faced by traditional
elites, as well as the underlying social patterns of coexistence between religious
communities, from such new religious movements as Hizballah,
which are questioning Lebanon’s “pacted” system of power-sharing. Further
contributing to this predicament, argues Nabeel Haidar, is Lebanon’s educational
system, which has largely failed to forge a strong sense of Lebanese,
as opposed to communal, identity. Thus, the people continue to view their
particular religious leader as their “political mediator” instead of looking to
the state.
Perhaps the most pointed example of these hardening communal barriers
is found in Julie Peteet’s excellent article on the Palestinian community
in Lebanon. Highlighting a new war and a postwar process of “othering,”
she argues that Palestinian relations with the Lebanese have become more
socially and spatially polarized, a development that has reversed a more
blurred prewar reality. Camp borders are now “brutally” defined and the
extent of Palestinian working rights have been increasingly restricted, both
of which have contributed to a dramatic deterioration in the community’s
socioeconomic well-being. Mona Khalaf’s article on the status of women
in postwar Lebanon paints a similar picture of marginalization, character-

118 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:1
ized both by the “feminization of poverty” as well as by the entrenchment
of legal discrimination, symbolized by the difficulties in reforming
Lebanon’s religiously controlled personal status laws and courts.
The third section deals with a variety of socioeconomic problems.
Wassim Shahin’s article on the Lebanese economy provides a stark statistical
analysis of its poor performance, though it only alludes to some of the
underlying causes, such as “inefficient allocations,” namely, corruption.
More pointedly critical articles – indeed, along with that by Peteet, the volume’s
best – are Fuad Hamdan’s examination of Lebanon’s ecological crisis
and Michael Davie’s critique of Lebanon’s postwar plans for urban
reconstruction. Hamdan refers to Lebanon as “drowning in its own waste,”
plagued by a corrupt Council for Development and Reconstruction and a
weak Ministry of the Environment. Davie similarly refers to the country’s
“chaotic” urban landscape, where development is increasingly determined
by the trade-offs among Lebanon’s sectarian elites. By excluding the possibility
of grass-roots participation, this reality contributes to what Davie
calls “a social deficit” in postwar Lebanon.
This is not a comprehensive examination of Lebanon’s second republic,
for there is a very glaring omission: the formal political process, namely,
elections, Parliament, and the judicial system. Instead, the book gives a great
deal – and in my mind undue – attention to questions of Muslim-Christian
relations and dialogue. This deflects attention away from the real sources of
sectarianism in Lebanon: entrenched elite power. Ellis also provides no
editorial justification for why some topics were included and others were
omitted. Presumably, these were simply the ones that emerged from the conference,
sponsored jointly by Villanova and the Lebanese American
University in 1998, on which this collection is based. In addition, many of
the articles have a subjective feel to them, for they were written by Lebanese
who are actively involved in the processes they describe. While extremely
useful as potential primary source materials for scholars, this makes them
somewhat less useful as pieces of objective analysis.
Furthermore, this volume lacks a rigorous analytical focus, preferring
instead to play it safe at a higher level of generalization and pragmatic prescription.
To describe Lebanon as being a “hostage” to the peace process,
for example, exaggerates its own lack of empowerment, however constrained
it might be by outside forces. The contributions of Peteet, Hamdan,
and Davie address the country’s real fault lines in a more explicit manner:
lamenting the predominance of elite alliances that, at present, determine the
direction of much of the country’s reconstruction processes, and arguing

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instead for promoting “non-violent and democratic models of social transformation.”
It is this “democratic deficit” in Lebanon, found at the political,
economic, and social levels, that is the main obstacle clouding its prospects
in this new century.
These criticisms aside, however, this volume has a number of excellent
contributions and reaches some sensible, if scattered, conclusions
about the challenges that Lebanon faces.
Paul Kingston
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada
Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy
since the Cold War
Philip Robins
Seattle: Washington University Press, 2003. 352 pages.
Philip Robins contends that Turkish foreign policy has faced four challenges
in four distinct periods of its history: (1) consolidating the emergent
Turkish Republic through external recognition (1930s), (2) remaining
neutral during the Second World War (1940s), (3) confronting the
challenge of Soviet expansionism (the cold war era), and (4) responding
to the end of bipolarity (post-cold war era). Robins examines these foreign
policy issues in the last period.
The main thesis of this work is threefold: First, Turkey is a status quo
power in the way that its foreign policy elites have fastened their thinking
and practice to the framework of “the sanctity of borders, of states, of
multilateral institutions and of norms of conduct, even when it became
clear that systemic changes had rendered some of these continuities no
longer tenable” (p. 6). Second, Turkey continues to be firmly oriented
westwards in terms of its foreign relations, which are characterized by its
strong commitment to NATO as well as its desire to join the European
Union (EU). Finally, Turkish foreign policy has been characterized more
by “caution than daring,” quoting Malik Mufti. Despite the increase in its
power relative to its neighbors, Turkey has avoided an interventionist foreign
policy by emphasizing the formation of multilateral frameworks for
conflict resolution.
Robins defends these arguments by analyzing the international systemic
and domestic politics context in which Turkish foreign policy is