In this report, the author looks at municipalist movements in Lebanon as a broader
representation of municipalism in the Global South. After offering a historical background to
the legal and political composition of the Lebanese state, she argues that municipalism in
Lebanon must look outside the confines of electoral politics, in large part due to the ways in
which laws and political sectarianism ideologically and practically limit the impact of electoral
politics. By looking at the 1977 Municipal Law, which came to define and confine municipal
politics in relation to religious factions and spaces, she presents the organizing of marginalized
migrant groups, who work outside and not inside the Lebanese institutional-political system,
as paradigms of municipalism in Lebanon. She emphasizes the importance of distinguishing
between municipal politics and municipalism in Global South contexts in order to better build
networks of support and solidarity.
November 2020
This report has been produced thanks to the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Photo by Nabil Ismail