@article{article_1028340, title={Lebanon, or the Impossible Revolution}, journal={Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi}, volume={4}, pages={1–17}, year={2022}, author={Gonzalez Fernandez, Borja W.}, keywords={Lebanon, Constitutional history, National Pact, Unwritten Constitution, Arab Spring}, abstract={Commonly depicted as a textbook example of ’failed state’, postwar Lebanon has drawn a cumbersome political and economic trajectory throughout the last three decades. However, neither the perceived inefficiency and corruption of its politico-administrative machinery nor the inability of its élites to engender a modicum of prosperity have managed to jeopardize the foundations whereupon the Lebanese system is anchored, whereas other-apparently more solid-régimes fell down amid public outcry. Unaffected by the winds of change blowing during the Arab Spring, the defining elements of Lebanon’s political structure have remained basically unchanged in spite of civil war, foreign occupation, and popular protests. This paper, in analyzing the guidelines of such a political construction, will argue that the consuetudinary power-sharing practices and gradualist approach to change enshrined within the so-called ’National Pact’ have turned an apparently weak system into an ironclad construction, where radical transformations and revolutionary upheavals are comparatively hard to achieve.}, number={1}, publisher={Necmettin Erbakan University}