Lebanon's sovereignty 3 - Stephen Krasner's four concepts (conclusion)

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Leonhardt van Efferink (December 2011)

Introduction

Lebanon has known a history of weak governments, foreign interference and porous borders. Not surprisingly, many analysts have claimed that Lebanon’s sovereignty is structurally weak. This article discusses Hezbollah’s role in that regard by applying four sovereignty concepts of Stephen Krasner: domestic, interdependency, Vatellian and international legal sovereignty.

This is the last part of the article which contains its conclusion and bibliography. The first part briefly introduces a history of Lebanon's territory, people and political system, while the second part focused on the military, social and political roles of Hezbollah in this country:

Leonhardt van Efferink: Lebanon's sovereignty 1 - a history of its territory, people and political system

Leonhardt van Efferink: Lebanon's sovereignty 2 - the military, social and political rise of Hezbollah

This article is based on my conference paper "How Hezbollah affects Lebanon’s sovereignty". A pdf file of the complete article is available on the PSA website:

"How Hezbollah affects Lebanon’s sovereignty"

Conclusion: domestic, Vatellian, interdependence, international legal sovereignty

One crucial finding of this analysis of the Lebanese State is that the historical preference among the ruling elite for little state interference has resulted in many ineffective national institutions. At least as important is the fact that the Shia still have disproportionally little political power, despite having become the largest sectarian group. Both factors account for Hezbollah’s gradual emergence since the 1980s.

The analysis also raises questions about sovereignty, in line with the observation of Biersteker and Weber (1996, p. 2) that "...sovereignty remains an ambiguous concept." For example, casting light on the military, social and political roles of Hezbollah yields valuable insights into the question as to why the Shia organisation is instrumental in Iran, Syria and Israel’s infringements of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Nonetheless, the ramifications of some activities of Hezbollah are hard to clarify. For example, how can its social programmes and military presence in certain areas have a negative effect on domestic sovereignty when the Lebanese State has never been present there? Would it in this respect not be more appropriate to view such activities as the reflection of limited domestic sovereignty rather than its cause? In addition, could we still argue that Hezbollah’s military branch erodes Lebanon’s domestic sovereignty when we know that the national government has officially approved the existence and strategy of this militia?

These findings can be translated in these key conclusions:

• Hezbollah has skilfully used the limited authority of the state to perform tasks that traditionally belong to a state, such as providing social security and national security. However, its effect on domestic sovereignty is, as we just noted, hard to assess.
• Hezbollah’s ties with Iran, Israel and Syria have had a negative effect on Lebanon’s Vatellian and interdependence sovereignty.
• Hezbollah has not had an impact on Lebanon’s international legal sovereignty.

In all, the findings provide support for a rare angle on Hezbollah that perfectly illustrates the difficulty of assessing Hezbollah’s infringement of Lebanon'sovereignty. I am referring to the view of Hafez (2008) who does not consider Hezbollah "a state within a state" because Hezbollah has never attempted to replace the state in any capacity. Therefore, he (2008, p. 192) argues that "[i]t is in fact the absence of the state, dating back to several decades before the emergence of Hezbollah, that prompted the latter to fill the vacuum."

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