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REFORM AND TRANSITION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
SERIES EDITOR: IOANNIS N. GRIGORIADIS
Joseph P. Helou
Reform and Transition in the Mediterranean
Series Editor
Ioannis N. Grigoriadis
Bilkent University
Ankara, Turkey
The series of political and economic crises that befell many countries
in the Mediterranean region starting in 2009 has raised emphatically
questions of reform and transition. While the sovereign debt crisis of
Southern European states and the “Arab Spring” appear prima facie unre-
lated, some common roots can be identified: low levels of social capital
and trust, high incidence of corruption, and poor institutional perfor-
mance. This series provides a venue for the comparative study of reform
and transition in the Mediterranean within and across the political, cul-
tural, and religious boundaries that crisscross the region. Defining the
Mediterranean as the region that encompasses the countries of Southern
Europe, the Levant, and North Africa, the series contributes to a better
understanding of the agents and the structures that have brought reform
and transition to the forefront. It invites (but is not limited to) interdis-
ciplinary approaches that draw on political science, history, sociology,
economics, anthropology, area studies, and cultural studies. Bringing
together case studies of individual countries with broader comparative
analyses, the series provides a home for timely and cutting-edge scholar-
ship that addresses the structural requirements of reform and transition;
the interrelations between politics, history and culture; and the strate-
gic importance of the Mediterranean for the EU, the USA, Russia, and
emerging powers.
Activism, Change
and Sectarianism
in the Free Patriotic
Movement
in Lebanon
Joseph P. Helou
Department of Social Sciences
Lebanese American University
Beirut, Lebanon
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
With the publication of this title, I thank everyone who assisted in bring-
ing this project to life. I thank the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan.
I thank Denise Parker for her professional proof reading of this book.
I thank the academics whose comments, advice and guidance deep-
ened my understanding of theoretical and empirical topics in the social
sciences over the years; they include Bice Maiguashca, Farid El-Khazen,
Irene Fernandez-Molina, Jad Chaaban, Nawaf Salam, Paul Kingston and
Paul Salem, among others.
This book is based on research supported by the AUB—Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs Nadim Makdisi
Memorial Fund. I thank the Issam Fares Institute for its support.
I am indebted to all the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) activists
whose experience in political activism constituted the primary sources
for this book. I thank them for taking the time to explain vital aspects
of their movement. While FPM activists spent valuable time explaining
many aspects of their movement, they do not bear responsibility for the
analysis fleshed out in this book, which reflects my own arguments.
I acknowledge the assistance of the archives department at the
Lebanese daily Annahar in providing me access to hundreds of news-
paper pieces featuring news on the FPM. These pieces provided reliable
secondary sources to verify the existence of FPM activism throughout
the period 1990–2005.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Last but not least, I thank my father Prosper, mother Lina and
brother Robin for their unconditional love and support; their backing
makes me who I am today. My mother’s constant nudge to “go finish
that book” brought this book to life.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Index 191
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Aims
This book seeks to present an empirical analysis of a Lebanese political
movement that had an important impact on the course of national poli-
tics, especially in the country’s post-war scenario, as a sizable movement
that was disenfranchised from formal participation in conventional politics
(Parliament, Council of Ministers, positions within the state bureaucracy,
etc.) in the period 1990–2005. Although this movement conveyed secu-
lar political ideas in relation to its counterparts, the sociological composi-
tion of the movement’s membership was clearly tilted toward middle-class
Christians, while simultaneously welcoming activists from various Mus-
lim denominations into its ranks. Therefore, the disenfranchisement of
the FPM from Lebanese politics and the expatriation of its leader, Michel
4 J. P. HELOU
Rationale
The primary rationale warranting a study of the FPM is to fill a gap in the
Lebanese social movement’s literature. The main reason no one has ana-
lyzed the movement is because a study of it during the period 1990–2005
was almost impossible, given the tremendous challenges imposed on the
FPM, which, in turn, obliged the movement to maintain a certain level of
secrecy to ensure the success of its activism. Researchers who might have
been willing to study the movement during the period 1990–2005 would
have encountered difficulties in gathering data, since FPM activists were
quite cautious about sharing information with anyone regarding their
political activism within the movement for fear of being hunted down by
national security institutions, such as the Lebanese army, Internal Secu-
rity Forces, General Security Directorate and State Security Directorate.
6 J. P. HELOU
Therefore, studying the FPM, which was clearly opposed to the political
elite of Lebanon and the intervention of Syria in Lebanese affairs, only
became possible following the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon
in 2005, which provided the movement with the right to assemble freely.
Of course, an important rationale for the study of the FPM, and move-
ment politics in Lebanon generally, is to understand how these move-
ments interact with their broader political context. In this respect, the
Lebanese state, which is driven by a complex set of disunited and frag-
mented institutions, a disunited and quarreling political elite, and sectar-
ian politics, which, in turn, is manifested in high levels of post-war cor-
ruption, cannot be treated as a unitary actor as such. Since the FPM was
faced with this type of fragmented state, this author was interested to ana-
lyze to what extent it was able to reject the established order on the one
hand, and to what degree it coexisted within the established order on the
other.
In addition to studying the interaction of the FPM with the Lebanese
political system, the extent to which the movement was able to combat
Lebanese sectarian politics or otherwise succumb to certain features of
sectarianism constitutes an essential rationale for this research. Sectarian-
ism is not only a power-sharing agreement that assigns members of a sec-
tarian community to the positions designated for their specific sect within
the Lebanese political system, but also a political-economic system fos-
tered by the political elite to share in the spoils of government and then
use some of those resources to mobilize the loyalty of their supporters.
This book embraces the definition of sectarianism advanced by Salloukh
et al. (2015, p. 3), who define it as “a modern constitutive Foucauldian
socioeconomic and political power that produces and reproduces sectarian
subjects and modes of political subjectification and mobilization through
a dispersed ensemble of institutional, clientelist, and discursive practices.”
Those authors view sectarianism as a holistic political-economic and ideo-
logical system that pervades many aspects of Lebanese life, which is under-
pinned by clientelist patronage networks and a symbolic repertoire that
incorporates large segments of society into corporatized sectarian com-
munities. This sectarian system results in a distorted incentive structure
that redirects individual loyalties away from state institutions and symbols
toward sectarian communities and their political and religious elite (ibid.).
Although the FPM expressed forms of collective action that resembled
many other social movements, such as protests and demonstrations, what
makes a study of it extremely significant is the way it was able to run
1 INTRODUCTION 7
Research Methodology
This book draws on 30 semi-structured interviews as primary sources of
information to flesh out FPM narratives of activism, change and sectar-
ianism during its examination of the emergence, persistence and institu-
tional transformation phases of the movement. During the interviews the
author conducted, FPM activists shared their experiences in movement
activism as well as their dissatisfaction with some internal party affairs.
While this author draws on the information gathered from these semi-
structured interviews, no part of this work replicates the ideas, opinions
or proposals of FPM activists without subjecting them to critical review.
Therefore, readers of this work should understand that this research
does not constitute a movement publication that reveals the subjective
voices of FPM activists, but a critical analysis of the movement that inte-
8 J. P. HELOU
Central Argument
This book demonstrates that the role of FPM activists and Michel Aoun
were the key factors that built on political change to bring about the
emergence and institutional transformation of the FPM on the one hand,
and to mobilize resources for the persistence of the movement on the
other. FPM activists played a crucial role in dealing with the opportunities
and resources at their disposal to bring the movement to life by launch-
ing rounds of activism and continuing to express their political thoughts,
while also having to face the attempts of the political elite to weaken their
movement. They also had to deal with the challenges imposed by the sec-
tarian politics of Lebanon, which affected the transformation of the FPM
into a political party in the post-2005 period by drawing it away from
its secular political discourse toward the adoption of more overt sectar-
ian strategies and discourse. Despite the importance of political change
in bringing about the emergence and institutional transformation of the
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