Consociational democracy and urban sustainability : transforming the confessional divides in Beirut

Is 'consociational democracy' a sustainable working model for deeply divided societies? Despite its relative success in Lebanon, rapid urbanization has presented serious challenges to the rigid confessional power-sharing arrangement. In the city of Beirut, confessionalism, which is closely associated with urbanization, has led to the polarization, rather than the moderation, of sectarian divides. The results of an opinion survey conducted by the Lebanese American University during 2006-2007 in Beirut and its suburbs demonstrate that political polarization is driven fundamentally by a continual shift in the confessional balance of power. Urban tension has intensified owing to the fluidity of migration and displacement patterns while confronted by a rigid confessional power-sharing arrangement. Confessionally based consociational democracy has been failing to accommodate communities' self-preservation as well as integration. This article suggests that consociational democracy needs to accommodate secular as well as confessional proportional representation and thus serve as a conflict transformation model. The implementation of a transitional electoral law that synthesizes confessional and secular representations in the Greater Metropolitan Beirut district is proposed as an institutional illustration for moderating rigid confessionalism and helping transform urban relations towards sustainability.