A State of Clerics and Families:

notes About the Origin of the Confessional Government in Lebanon (1861-1926)

Abstract

Lebanon is a “Penetrated State”, whose sovereignty is under siege by the influence that regional and global events create within the subnational communities that live in it. At the same time, tribal ties, strongly marked in their population, serve as anchor to third States that dispute power spaces in this strategic corner of the Arab World. This phenomenon is not new. Having emerged in 1861, political confessionalism, as promoted by foreign powers, shaped its system of government, first by the Ottoman Empire and then by France. This system, today, has shown important continuities.