Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Consociational Systems: The Cases of Lebanon and Iraq

ABSTRACT

Pizzorno’s distinction between ‘manifest’ and ‘hidden’ politics helps to explain the resilience of the consociational systems of Lebanon and Iraq in times of crises. Through the lens of ‘manifest’ politics, the Lebanese and Iraqi political systems are permanently on the brink of collapse. By contrast, through the lens of ‘hidden’ politics, the Lebanese and Iraqi political systems manifest their organised resilience. This comparative analysis of the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in Iraq and Lebanon contributes to the debate over how consociational power-sharing works in practice as a fine-grained system to maintain the status quo.

KEYWORDS:

• manifest and hidden politics
• consociational power-sharing
• resilience
• Iraq
• Lebanon

Acknowledgments

While the article was a collective effort, Rosita Di Peri is the main author of section three, the parts discussing Lebanon and the conclusion; Irene Costantini is the main author of the introduction and the parts discussing Iraq.

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions as well as The International Spectator’s editorial team for their constant support.

Notes

1 Italy is not characterised by cultural segmentation, but during the First Republic, it was analysed as a special case of consociationalism because of its ideological polarisation (Bogaards 2005).

2 Resilience entered the international political discourse as a normative concept indicating the capacity of a society to respond to external shocks. Here the concept is used without any normative connotation, to indicate the capacity of a political elite to avoid changes and thus preserve the status quo.

3 This is a social security programme launched in 1965 to ensure medical, maternity and disability assistance, as well as subsidies for families, severance pay and pensions for workers in the formal economy.

4 In parallel to the central role played by the militias, other actors such as international organisations and religious philanthropy were also relevant (see Jawad 2009).

5 While total health expenditure per capita is higher than MENA average, public health spending per capita is quite low when compared to other countries with a similar income. In 2011, public spending on health represented 25.5 percent of the total health expenditure (1.7 percent of GDP) and 5.8 percent of total government spending. Similarly, MoPH allocations from the government budget (excluding debt) dropped by 41 percent from 5.9 percent of total government expenditure in 2005 to 3.4 percent in 2012 (World Bank 2015). In 2019, due to the economic crisis, hospitalisation expenses were reduced by around 80 billion LBP (Institut de Finance Basil Fuleihan 2021).

6 In April 2021, a similar blaze occurred at the COVID-19 hospital Ibn al-Khatib in Baghdad.

7 In April 2020, Muqtada al-Sadr invited people to “prostrate crying and begging God to lift this burden (COVID-19) from this nation, for 30 minutes after the Friday prayer before the afternoon prayer” (Aldroubi 2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rosita Di Peri

Rosita Di Peri is Associate Professor at the University of Turin, Turin, Italy.

Irene Costantini

Irene Costantini is Assistant Professor at the Univeristy of Naples, L’Orientale, Naples, Italy, Email: [email protected]; Twitter: @IreneCostantini