The consociational democracy at stake: Four approaches to explain Lebanon past and present

Lebanon's history of democratic establishment, collapse and resuscitation represents an excellent laboratory to assess the theory of Consociational Democracy. This article elaborates four main approaches — Elitist, Institutional, Developmental and International — that emerged in the literature concerning Lebanon since the mid-1960s. It is aimed to demonstrate their complete interdependence in contributing to Consociational Democracy theory, despite the fact that each of these approaches purposes to give unique explanation of the Lebanese political system. Thus, the explanatory variables — elites, institutions, modernization and international environment — of Lebanon's cycles of reforms and collapses are empirically analyzed in view of the authors who proposed them. Finally, the approaches will be recomposed to enrich the debate on theoretical and prescriptive contributions of power sharing in Lebanon.