Survival through restrained institutionalization: the case of Hezbollah in Lebanon

Abstract

This thesis is an in-depth exploration of the evolving nature of domestic strategies adopted by Lebanon’s Hezbollah since its foundation in 1985 until the contemporary time. Based on Joel Migdal’s contributions to the literature on state-society relations, and Samuel Huntington’s understanding of institutionalization, it seeks to highlight and explain important transformations in Hezbollah’s political program, its sustained acquisition of arms, its social mobilization strategy, and its sensitive relationship with a de jure sovereign yet de facto weak Lebanese consociational system. The study proposes an explanation that combines Hezbollah’s ability to take advantage of the segmental autonomy that characterizes the power-sharing arrangements governing the Lebanese political system, and the overall existing political opportunity structure. The core argument is that Hezbollah has been able to become a powerful non-state actor through a process of restrained institutionalization which takes into consideration the need to sustain popular support on one hand, and the sensitive intricacies of Lebanon’s consociational system on the other hand. In other words, Hezbollah has invested its capacities in a way that maximizes its power in the existing political system, while remaining institutionally autonomous to a relative extent from it, and therefore becoming able to pursue its independent interests. However, the line demarcating the boundaries between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government has become finer. That said, study also aims to address the conceptual ambiguity resulting from Hezbollah’s penetration of the Lebanese political system, thus becoming a hybrid actor whose power encompasses both state and non-state attributes.