Approaching decentralization in Lebanon: viable or farfetched?

Abstract

The Taif Agreement, which ended the Lebanese civil war in 1989, called for the concept of decentralization as a reform strategy. This political consensus has caused clientelist practices to govern the creation and implementation of public policy, as well as the distribution of public services and funding, benefiting political elites (Menhall, 2017). This leads to substantial dysfunction in the policymaking process and a significant decline in the quality of public services, which provides an impetus to implement the decentralization measures the Taef has suggested as a means of avoiding political deadlocks brought on by the current power-sharing arrangements and promoting economic prosperity. Along this vein, this study investigates whether administrative decentralization might help revive the struggling economy. The aim of this research is to investigate how decentralization could potentially emerge in the discourse as a policy objective during the contemporary Lebanese economic crisis and understand the process leading up to the implementation of the solutions to better assess the capability of decentralization in a contemporary economic crisis. The following research question has to be answered in more detail: How does the implementation of decentralization in Lebanon lead to economic prosperity and help in mitigating the economic crisis? After reviewing a number of nations where decentralization was successful, this research also attempts to recommend a set of requirements for decentralization in Lebanon. The possibility of implementing these requirements are analyzed in light of Lebanese legislative frameworks, decentralization obstacles, and prior decentralization plans. Based on this, the study decides whether implementing decentralization in Lebanon would be a fantastical, far-fetched solution to the economic crisis or an actual, workable one.