Governing the Gatherings: The interaction of Lebanese state institutions and Palestinian authorities in the hybrid political order of South Lebanon's informal Palestinian settlements

Abstract

Public authority beyond the state is often seen as isolated from the state or constituting a threat to the state. Increasingly, however, ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ forms of governance are understood as closely connected and interdependent. This dissertation contributes to this theoretical shift from a dichotomous understanding of ‘failed states’ versus ‘rebel rulers’ towards a more holistic perspective on governance as a form of ‘hybrid political order.’ It does so by means of a qualitative case-study of two informal Palestinian refugee settlements – so-called ‘gatherings’ – in South Lebanon. Based on extensive fieldwork, the everyday interactions between Lebanese local state institutions and the ‘Popular Committees’ that govern inside Palestinian settlements are explored through concepts such as the ‘mediated state,’ the ‘negotiating statehood’ and the ‘twilight institution.’ This investigation of the governance dynamics – concerning the provision of services, the maintenance of public order and the organisation of political representation – in and around the often ignored gatherings helps to counterbalance the perspective of state and non-state forms of public authority as necessarily zero-sum. Lebanon’s Palestinian camps are routinely characterized as ‘states-within-the-state’ that undermine the sovereignty of the Lebanese state. The de facto interactions that occur between Lebanese and Palestinian governance actors in informal settlements, however, instead produce a form of mediated stateness in which Palestinian and Lebanese authorities depend on each other to maintain their delicate positions in the country’s hybrid political order. As such, the Palestinian Popular Committees might in important ways prop up rather than challenge the Lebanese state, demonstrating that state and non-state forms of authority can be mutually constitutive.