3 - The Postwar Erosion of Tripoli’s City Corporatism

Summary

Tripoli suffered as much from the post-war period as from the war itself. This chapter investigates the structural causes of the crisis of Sunnism in Tripoli in the 1990s, after the revival of Lebanon’s state institutions. Why were local and national politicians unable to rebuild the infrastructure and political spirit of the city after the war?

Lebanon’s post-war system of representation had severe shortcomings. The situation was particularly dire in Tripoli, where Syrian power politics were more direct and far-reaching. Syria’s representatives played various Tripolitanian strata against each other. Crony capitalist networks, which benefited Syrian and Lebanese political and economic entrepreneurs, created new internal divides. The new neoliberal political elites and the bourgeois Islamists turned their backs on the urban poor in Tripoli. As the state eroded and corruption increased, Muslim confessional welfare societies gained an important role in Tripoli’s educational sector.