Unraveling Hizbullah's institutional paradox. (c2012)

Abstract

Scholarship addressing Hizbullah’s military and political aspects is vast. Yet, the literature is relatively limited when examining Hizbullah as a social service provider. This thesis looks at the party as a social and educational service provider and studies the party’s extensive networks and organizations that have improved the socio-economic status of the Shi‘as, but have also enhanced the party’s reputation and enabled it to have control over a substantial part of the Shi‘a community. Hizbullah’s practices have matched the neoliberal policies that the party always condemned, thus hindering the emergence of the “strong, capable and just” Lebanese state that the party calls for. Hizbullah provides vast social and educational services to enhance its resistance society and expand it. Social and educational institutions are therefore political tools to mobilize supporters and widen the party’s scope of influence. They establish political loyalty and strengthen the party’s ties with the Shi‘a community, especially when the party succeeds in presenting these services as part of the enhancement of the ‘resistance society’.