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Alienation and Political Participation in Lebanon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Nafhat Nasr  and
Monte Palmer
Nafhat Nasr
Affiliation:
The American University of Beirut Florida State University
Monte Palmer
Affiliation:
The American University of Beirut Florida State University
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Extract

In a recent book Michael Hudson referred to Lebanon as the “Precarious Republic.” The Lebanese Republic was said to be precarious because its citizens tended to identify more strongly with the ideologies of their various sects than with the state, because of the gulf separating the rich from the poor, and because of the growing restlessness of the latter. It was also said to be precarious because of growing disaffection of most segments of Lebanese society with most areas of government performance.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , October 1977 , pp. 493 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Hudson, Michael C., The Precarious Republic (New York: Random House, 1968).Google Scholar

2 Center for Developmental Studies, Protest: The Student Movement in Lebanon (in Arabic) (Beirut: Dar al-Taliah, 1971).Google Scholar

3 Shaw, Marvin E. and Wright, Jack M., Scales for the Measurement of Attitudes (New York: McGraw-Hill Company, 1967).Google Scholar

4 Milbrath, Lester W. and Goel, M. L., Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics (2d ed.; Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Company, 1977).Google Scholar

5 Barakat, Halim, “Social and Political Integration in Lebanon: A Case of Social Mosaic,” Middle East Journal, 27 (Summer, 1973), 301–318.Google Scholar

6 The statistics cited in this section are derived from a number of tables which were precluded from the article for space limitations. Moreover, some of the trends established here can be observed in the Gamma coefficients of the tables incorporated in the preceding section.

7 Gamson, William A., “Means of Influence, Political Trust, and Social Control”, Power and Discontent (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1968)Google Scholar. See also Zeitlin, Maurice, Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class (Princeton University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

8 Erbe, William, “Social Involvement and Political Activity: A Replication and Elaboration,” American Sociological Review,(1964) 198–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Fischer, Claude S., “On Urban Alienations and Anomie: Powerlessness and Social Isolation,” American Sociological Review, 38 (06 1973), 311–325.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

9 Mueller, John H., Schuessler, Karl F., and Costner, Herbert L., Statistical Reasoning in Sociology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970).Google Scholar

10 Zenner, Walter P., and Richter, Maurice N., “The Druzes as a Divided Minority Group,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 7 (07—10 1972), 193–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Brinton, Crane, The Anatomy of Revolution (New York: Random House, 1938)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The problem of high alienation is further compounded by the fact that the prescriptions for change run in opposite directions as revealed by student political affiliations, orientations and actions.

12 In an article written in 1974, we observed that the majority of Lebanese college students were not highly active participants in politics. But a big majority of them were clearly oriented in this direction and that “the narrowing of the gap between orientation and operation depends on the continuity of widely “attractive” issues and the development of a student movement.” See Nasr, Nafhat and Palmer, Monte, “Family, Peers, Social Control and Political Participation among Lebanese University Students,” Journal of Developing Areas, n.v. (04, 1975), 377–393Google Scholar. Keen observers of the political scene in Lebanon would agree that since the early 1970s perennial divisive issues relating to the identity of the state, the structure of power, the “sovereignty” of the state and the direction of policy were compounded and increasingly provoked student activism and diversity. Concurrently, student organizations (mostly proxy actors for national political parties and organizations) were clustering in adversely poised student unions, thus providing the nervous system for broader activation of students.

13 It is perhaps simplistic to attribute the civil war in Lebanon to alienation as it relates to protest, but the degree and content of alienation (normlessness and cynicism) revealed in this study clearly demonstrate the extent to which the Lebanese were prepared to contribute to the destruction of the status quo of 1975.