A Federal Lebanon? An Overview of Multicultural Federations and Comparison with Lebanon
Analysis by Ahmad Al Saati, Featured Writer
July 10th, 2021
Lebanese President Michel Aoun has been quoted saying, "Lebanon is too big to be swallowed (i.e. annexed), and yet too small to be divided." The quote was concerned with political unity among the Lebanese people but is recently being cited by those who oppose the implementation of a federal ruling system in Lebanon, a proposal that has recently gained traction in political circles. These opponents believe that Lebanon's size makes it too small to be divided into autonomous cantons with an overarching federal government like in Switzerland and that this would weaken the state of Lebanon even further. As such, we have chosen today to address the issue of Federalization, to quickly describe it and its variations, to present its flaws and successes, and to compare between Lebanon and some multi-cultural federations like the US, Switzerland, Ethiopia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in order to find out why it was implemented, and if it worked for them, with special attention paid to Bosnia and Herzegovina due to considerable similarities with Lebanon.
Federalism is one of the most prominent ruling systems in the world, practiced by such giants as Switzerland, the United States, India, Nigeria, Russia, Spain, Canada, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as other countries like Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Iraq, Mexico, and Malaysia. And despite varying kinds of federalism being implemented in all of these countries, the general structure of federalism can be summed up as such: a federal overarching government, with its own constitution, with a parliament that handles the legislative duties and has two chambers (a senate/upper house and a house of representatives) that divide the legislative duties and work together to approve one another's laws, in addition to many subservient federal subject entities (named states in the US, cantons in Switzerland, oblasts/okrugs/krais/republics in Russia, emirates in the UAE, provinces in Canada and so on) who have their own relative autonomy under the federal government and their own constitution, local governments, laws and more.
In the case of the US, the house of representatives has members divided proportionally according to the populations of each state, while the Senate has exactly two senators from every state, regardless of the difference in population and size, and each state has its own constitution, laws, and government with a governor overseeing it. In federations such as Switzerland, Ethiopia, and India, where ethnolinguistic diversity is some of the highest, each state (or canton in the case of the Swiss) has the right to choose its own official language, as well as form its own government in many cases. (It should be noted that in Lebanon, the Senate was abolished with a constitutional amendment, leaving the house of representatives as the sole parliamentary chamber, and if Lebanon were to attempt to match the bicameral parliament structure of other federations, it may need to bring the Senate back.)
But Lebanon's problems aren't really linguistic ones, but rather religious or ethnoreligious, which is why we believe the best comparison to make for Lebanon is Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that faced a civil war between its distinct but linguistically homogeneous religious people groups. If we are to have a federal system, it would likely resemble that of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a multi-ethnic nation par excellence, with three dominant ethnic groups being Serbs, Croatians, and Bosniaks, with the first two being Christian and the third being Muslim. It should be noted that while there are differences between their individual dialects, their language is considered by linguists to be one single Serbo-Croatian language that everyone can understand, only considered three separate languages due to political reasons.
Despite being 52,197 sqm, about five times bigger than Lebanon's 10,452 sq km, Bosnia and Herzegovina has only 3.8 million people, about a quarter short of Lebanon's 5.2 million people. But in terms of religious diversity, Bosnia and Herzegovina is not unlike Lebanon. While Lebanon's major religious groups have 61.1% Muslims, divided into 30.6% Sunni and 30.5% Shia, 33.7% Christians, as well as 5.2% Druze, Bosnia and Herzegovina has 50.8% Muslims (almost entirely all Bosniaks) and 45.9% Christians, divided into 30.7% Orthodox (almost entirely all Serbs) and 15.2% Roman Catholics (almost entirely all Croats). (CIA World Factbook, 2013)
Bosnia and Herzegovina first adopted a federal system after the Washington Agreement of 1994 in an attempt to end a civil war between Croat and Bosniak armies, forming a federal system divided into 10 cantons, with their own autonomous governments and centers, to support the ethnic diversity of Croats and Bosniaks. A second entity, Republika Srpska, originally a Serb breakaway state that had been fighting them both for years in the civil war, later joined them after the Dayton Agreement of 1995. Instead of integrating the Republika Srpska within the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, they together formed one new country similarly called Bosnia and Herzegovina. Somewhat confusingly, the modern country of Bosnia and Herzegovina thus includes the similarly named but distinct Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the Federation of Bosniaks and Croats, still divided into cantons) as well as the Republika Srpska, the entire country engulfing the two itself also a federation. The Brčko District in the north of the country was created in 2000, from the territory of both entities, due to its unique ethnic makeup wherein there aren't many ethnic majorities to be ruled jointly by both entities.
While Lebanon was facing a civil war in 1975 based on religious violence, with the Muslim sects originally in alliance with Druze against the Christians, multiple parties wanted to split it as well. Lebanon could also have been a federation between Muslims (and Druze) to maintain similar autonomy in it, with an entity of Christian majority being added to it, and the same situation pertaining to Brčko applied to Beirut.
As such, the present country of Bosnia and Herzegovina has a majority of Bosniaks and Croats in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the majority of Serbs in the Republika Srpska, based on ethnic distribution lines, with the Brčko district being mixed. Like all religious diversity maps of Lebanon, the distribution of the various peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina is also not very uniform, with massive exclaves and enclaves and the Republika Srpska is cut in half by the entirety of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. So, if Lebanon were to be divided, it can also be like this and it can be just as successful.
Finally, there is an overarching federal government that attempts to secure the representation of all federal entities and all ethnic groups. Instead of one president, the head of state is a three-member presidency, made up of a Bosniak, a Serb, and a Croat, elected together for 4 years with the chair rotating among them each eight months. The people of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina elect the Bosniak and Croat directly while the Serb is elected by the Republika Srpska. Then, the Chair of the Council of Ministers is chosen by the Presidency, regardless of ethnic identity, but the Council of Ministers is meant to have representation for all ethnic groups. Meanwhile, the legislative power is vested in the Parliamentary Assembly, with the House of Peoples containing 15 delegates, two-thirds from the Federation, and one-third from the Republika Srpska, with every five delegates representing an ethnic group. On the contrary, the House of Representatives has 42 members elected under proportional representation, meaning that the more population a people group has, the more members it would have.
This does remind you of the post-Taef representation quotas in the Lebanese government, doesn't it?
This all does seem to be working for Bosnia and Herzegovina, for according to the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the European Union Police Mission, UNHCR, and other international organizations, there is quite satisfactory security in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina in all its areas, despite some issues like recurrent discrimination and occasional tension.
However, the primary issue in all of this is thus: is Lebanon truly in need of becoming a federation? While the Civil War was perhaps bloody like the Bosnian war, it did end up being ended by the Ta’ef agreement that did similar ethnic distributions in the government of Lebanon as was done in the Bosnian federal government, and while tensions do spring up occasionally, religious tensions in Lebanon have gotten far weaker in recent years. The only remaining issue relating is the centralization of power, with much attention being paid to Beirut and certain other areas, and the relative lack of infrastructure in other Lebanese cities and villages. In fact, an even bigger problem, some say, is that Lebanon has become too divided due to the Ta’ef. The bigger problems facing Lebanon right now are economic, and health crises as well as high levels of corruption in the government. It could be argued that federalism isn't quite necessary right now as religious tensions are subsiding.
Another problem is the issue of identity. While Switzerland more or less managed to form a semblance of an identity due to its history of neutrality, countries like Ethiopia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are facing issues with a lack of a unified national identity. Bosnian citizens still identify as Serbs, Croatians, and Bosniaks, and their religious tensions did not disappear, as evident from the 2014 problems.
This lack of unified identity combined with wishes for greater autonomy can lead to tension, violence, and attempts to secede from the federal union. Most infamously, the Tigrays in northern Ethiopia continue to distrust the federal government, believing they aren't being represented well enough and that they are too culturally distinct from the federal government in Addis Ababa. A perhaps less violent example is the Canadian province of Quebec, which is always vying for control in Canadian politics, and the referendum asking if the people wished to leave Canada in 1995 failed by a very small margin, with only 50.58% refusing. The reason for this is that Quebec always feels underrepresented in the federal government due to noticeable cultural differences, mostly at the level of its usage of the French language in contrast with the predominance of English elsewhere in Canada. Even in the United States, secession threats have been given multiple times by some southern states due to issues of identity, including but not limited to the American Civil War, where 11 southern states officially seceded from the Union and briefly formed the Confederate States of America before being annexed again when they lost the civil war 4 years later.
Many think that the Ta’ef agreement actually made Lebanon too divided due to its emphasis on dividing power and identity between religious groups, and that really defeats the point of federalization. Federalization in absence of a widespread belief in a unified Lebanese identity can lead us to just as many of the problems we have mentioned to have plagued federal countries. Some people even argue that Lebanon is already semi-federalized and facing all the issues of federalization as different entities in Lebanon have their own services and continue to have their own unique identity override loyalty to the central government. If Lebanon were to become a federal state, who's to say that tensions wouldn't find fertile land to grow and who's to say that, for example, the south wouldn't unilaterally attempt to secede again as it did in the past, on the basis of identity and religious and cultural differences?
Drawing from the criticisms shown above, federalism may not be the solution and perhaps less extreme solutions, like combating centralization of power, combating corruption, and increasing the strength of a unified Lebanese identity, can be more effective and more necessary to solve the issues plaguing Lebanon. But that is still up for debate.
Sources and further reading:
- Broschek, Jorg (2016). "Federalism in Europe, America and Africa: A Comparative Analysis". Federalism and Decentralization: Perceptions for Political and Institutional Reforms (PDF). Singapore: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. https://broschek.ca/uploads/Federalism%20in%20Europe,%20America%20and%20Africa%20A%20Comparative%20Analysis.pdf
- "European Commission Report – Enlargement – Bosnia and Herzegovina – Relations with the EU". Europa.Eu. https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/20190529-bosnia-and-herzegovina-analytical-report.pdf
- The CIA World Factbook for Lebanon. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/lebanon/
- The CIA World Factbook for Bosnia and Herzegovina. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/bosnia-and-herzegovina/
- Cardinal, Mario (2005). Breaking Point: Quebec, Canada, The 1995 Referendum. Montreal: Bayard Canada Books.
- "Division of Powers - Bosnia-Herzegovina". CoR. Retrieved 22 June 2021. https://portal.cor.europa.eu/divisionpowers/Pages/Bosnia-Herzegovina.aspx
- Ford, Henry Jones (1908). "The Influence of State Politics in Expanding Federal Power". Proceedings of the American Political Science Association.
- "Ethiopia: 'We are in our homeland, the invaders are attacking us,' says Tigray's Gebremichael". France 24. 15 December 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201216215210/https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20201205-ethiopia-we-are-in-our-homeland-the-invaders-are-attacking-us-says-tigray-s-gebremichael