Event Recap
The Art of Not Governing: Local Politics and Democratic Decline in Lebanon
On October 5, 2026, SAIS Europe hosted a book talk on "The Art of Not Governing: Local Politics and Democratic Decline in Lebanon." The event featured Christiana Parreira, Assistant Professor of International Relations/Political Science at the Geneva Graduate Institute, and was introduced by Sarah Parkinson, Aronson Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Parreira's book asks how the parties that emerged from Lebanon's civil war have kept winning elections despite failing to govern. The answer, she argued, lies in the country's more than 1,000 municipalities, one of the highest numbers of municipalities per capita in the world. Local councils have broad legal responsibilities but almost no money or authority of their own, so nearly every project needs approval and funding from ministries controlled by the governing parties.
This lets parties reward towns that elect loyal councils and starve those that back the opposition. Election results show them exactly where to send or withhold resources, and since the money comes from the state, the strategy costs them little, all without breaking any formal rules.
Parreira named six such sectarian parties and described them as a "party cartel" that held over 90% of parliamentary seats from 2005 to 2019, even as the country's infrastructure and finances deteriorated.
Two cities illustrated the pattern. In Saida, a waste treatment plant stalled for six years under an opposition council, then opened within a year once the Future Movement regained control. In Tripoli, an opposition council elected in 2016 saw its projects repeatedly blocked and its mayor ultimately ousted.
Even after the 2019 protests and financial collapse, cartel parties held on by distributing COVID-19 vaccines and fuel directly to loyal towns, and they managed to keep over 60% of seats in 2022.
The talk wrapped up with a Q&A on foreign influence, research challenges, and the role of Hezbollah. Parreira named real financial independence for municipalities, through administrative decentralization, as the most important possible reform, though she acknowledged it would be hard to achieve. She saw the best hope for change in grassroots movements, like those that came out of the 2019 protests and won seats in parliament.
The Art of Not Governing: Local Politics and Democratic Decline in Lebanon
hosted by Professor
Sarah E. Parkinson
Christiana Parreira
Assistant Professor, International Relations/Political Science
The talk will be based on Christiana Parreira's book project, discussing local governance during and after the Lebanese civil war.
CHRISTIANA PARREIRA
Christiana Parreira is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute. Her research focuses on the role of local political institutions and actors in governance, looking primarily at post-conflict contexts in the Middle East and North Africa. Her forthcoming book project examines how local governments and elections facilitated predatory state-building practices in Lebanon. In other research, she examines determinants of governance quality and distributive outcomes in Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Global South. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2020. Before joining the Graduate Institute, she served as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a pre-doctoral associate at the Harvard Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative.
If you cannot attend the event in person and wish to watch the session online, please register below:
