Lebanese politics: offices shared by sect under a text that forbids it

What the constitution writes and what convention adds

The constitution dates from 23 May 1926 and was drafted under the French mandate. Its present shape comes from the amendments that put the Taif Agreement of 1989 into law on 21 September 1990, and the English text published by the Constitute Project carries amendments to 2004.

What it writes down about religion is limited. Article 24 distributes the seats of the Chamber of Deputies equally between Christians and Muslims, proportionally among the sects on each side and proportionally among districts, until parliament passes an electoral law "outside the sectarian record". Article 95 tells a chamber elected half Muslim and half Christian to take measures to eliminate political sectarianism through an interim plan and a national council chaired by the president. In the meantime the sects are to be fairly represented in the cabinet, and first-rank posts in the administration, the judiciary and the security services are split equally between Christians and Muslims "without specifying any job to a specific sect". Article 22 provides for a Senate representing the religious communities, to be created once a chamber has been elected on a non-sectarian basis. Neither has happened.

The allocation of the three top offices is not in the text. Britannica describes it as an unwritten convention, Freedom House as a long-standing agreement on sectarian power-sharing, and both trace it to the National Pact of 1943. The same convention reserves the deputy speaker and the deputy prime minister for Greek Orthodox Christians, the army command for a Maronite and the chief of the general staff for a Druze, in the list of terms given in Wikipedia's article on the pact.

How the three top offices share power

Executive power sits with the Council of Ministers. Article 65 vests it there and places the armed forces under it; the president is head of state, chairs the Higher Defence Council and is commander-in-chief of forces that answer to the cabinet. The cabinet takes decisions by consensus where it can and by majority vote of those present where it cannot, and its quorum is two-thirds of its members.

Article 49 sets the president's term at six years and bars re-election until six years have passed since the end of the previous term. Britannica's summary describes the president as eligible to serve consecutive terms, which the published text does not support; the rule has been set aside by amendment, in 1949 for Bishara al-Khuri and on 3 September 2004, when parliament voted 96 to 29 to give Émile Lahoud three more years.

Taif shifted weight away from the president. Britannica describes the reform as reducing the powers of the Maronite president relative to those of the Sunni prime minister and the Shia speaker, and the speaker's term went from one year to four. Britannica's assessment of the Second Republic is that real power lay with the three office-holders together, the troika, and that decisions came out of bargaining among confessional leaders. Freedom House, in its report on 2024, describes policy as the result of negotiation among dominant political figures "regardless of formal titles and positions".

A cabinet needs a vote of confidence to govern. Britannica notes that a no-confidence vote is rarely used and that cabinets usually fall from internal dissent, unrest or foreign pressure.

How parliament is elected and why it extends itself

The chamber has 128 seats elected for four years in multi-member constituencies, half reserved for Christians and half for Muslims. Women gained the vote and the right to stand in 1953. The electoral law of 2017 introduced proportional representation with a preferential vote and widened voting from abroad; the elections of May 2018 were the first held under it and the first since 2009, because the parliament elected in 2009 had extended its own term three times.

The elections of 15 May 2022 were held under the same law. Turnout was 49%, according to Freedom House, which reports that the bloc of Hezbollah and its allies lost its majority but kept 61 seats, that independents associated with the protests of 2019 won 13, and that eight women were elected against six in 2018. Freedom House also notes that Lebanon has no independent electoral commission, that the Interior Ministry runs elections, that soldiers and citizens naturalised for less than ten years cannot vote, and that the seat formula does not reflect the communities' present size, which has not been counted since 1932.

Parties are many and mostly local. Wikipedia's article on the parliament describes most of them as electoral lists negotiated among local figures or as followings of a present or past leader, and records that no single party has won more than 12.5% of the seats. Freedom House describes them as vehicles for established communal leaders with patronage networks, and notes that the 2017 law raised candidates' registration fees and campaign spending caps in ways that favour wealthier groups. Every deputy is elected by all the voters of a constituency, whatever the seat's community, which the parliament's article says forces candidates to seek votes outside their own community unless it dominates the constituency.

Women have sat in parliament in small numbers and in the cabinet only since 2005. Britannica records that the cabinet formed in 2019, which it calls the most inclusive to that date, had four women among 30 ministers.

On 9 March 2026, a week into the renewed war with Israel, parliament extended its term again and moved the elections due in May 2026 to 2028. Wikipedia's article on that election records that most Christian parties opposed a two-year extension and wanted a shorter one or one without a fixed date.

Why the top offices fall vacant

The convention fixes which community holds an office; it does not fix who. Agreement on a person has repeatedly taken longer than the term allows. Parliament could not agree on a president when Amin Gemayel's term ended on 22 September 1988, and two rival governments followed until Taif. The office was empty again after Émile Lahoud's term ended in October 2007, until the Doha Agreement of May 2008; Britannica records a further stalemate from 2014 to 2016. When Michel Aoun's term ended in October 2022 the presidency stayed vacant until parliament elected the army commander in January 2025, and a caretaker cabinet governed through it.

Forming cabinets takes as long. After the elections of 6 May 2018 a national unity government was announced only on 31 January 2019, nine months later, once the factions agreed which bloc would fill one of the Sunni seats. After the cabinet resigned following the port explosion of August 2020, a new government was formed in September 2021.

Who judges and who administers locally

The legal system follows French models. Britannica lists courts of first instance, courts of appeal, courts of cassation and a Court of Justice for cases touching state security, with a Council of State for administrative cases; Taif added a Constitutional Council that rules on the constitutionality of laws and on electoral disputes. Matters of personal status, such as marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance, belong to the religious courts of each recognised community, so a citizen's rights in them depend on which community the person belongs to. Lebanon recognises 18 communities, and civil marriage is recognised only when contracted abroad. Wikipedia's article on Lebanon records that capital punishment was abolished in August 2026.

Freedom House's report on 2024 judges the judiciary not independent, with political leaders influencing appointments and decisions, and notes that military courts may try civilians. The investigation into the port explosion of 2020 has been repeatedly stalled by challenges to the judges leading it.

Lebanon has nine governorates, each under a governor representing the central government, and 25 districts. Municipalities with at least 500 inhabitants elect councils that choose their mayors; smaller villages elect a mukhtar and a council of elders. Local officers serve four-year terms.

Who holds arms besides the state

The army, air force and navy are the state's forces; the army split along sectarian lines in the civil war and was rebuilt after 1990. Hezbollah, a Shia party with its own armed wing, has been the exception to the state's monopoly of force since Taif disarmed most other militias. Freedom House describes the government's authority as limited in practice by autonomous armed groups such as Hezbollah and by foreign states with interests in Lebanon.

Resolution 1701 of 2006 calls for an area between the Blue Line and the Litani free of any armed personnel and weapons other than those of the Lebanese state and UNIFIL. After the war of 2024 the army was tasked with removing unauthorised weapons in the south. When Hezbollah opened fire on 2 March 2026 the cabinet banned its military activity and ordered the arrest of those launching rockets; Hezbollah's position, as reported in Wikipedia's account of the war, was that it acted to force an end to Israeli strikes and an Israeli withdrawal. On 7 August 2026 Lebanon and Israel agreed a shortlist of states that could send forces to verify the disarmament. UNIFIL's mandate ends on 31 December 2026 under Resolution 2790 of 2025.

Freedom House also records that residents of the south have lived with the risk of land mines since the civil war and that the organisers of past political violence have generally gone unpunished. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon was set up to try the killing of Rafic al-Hariri in 2005, and the national unity government collapsed in January 2011 amid tension over its expected indictment of Hezbollah members.

Freedom House scored Lebanon 41 out of 100 in its 2026 edition, 15 of 40 for political rights and 26 of 60 for civil liberties, and rated it Partly Free.

Who Lebanon stands with abroad

Lebanon's constitution calls the country Arab in identity and a founding member of both the Arab League and the United Nations. It joined the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in 1969 and the Francophonie in 1973.

The relationship with Syria has been the most consequential. A treaty of "fraternity, coordination and cooperation" was signed on 22 May 1991 while Syrian troops were in the country, they left in April 2005, and the two states established diplomatic relations for the first time in 2008. More than 1.5 million Syrians lived in Lebanon in 2024 by Freedom House's figure, of whom about 768,350 were registered with UNHCR in September 2024, the government having barred new registrations since 2015.

Lebanon has no diplomatic relations with Israel. The agreement of 17 May 1983 failed, and the two governments did not negotiate directly again until 14 April 2026, in Washington. The ceasefire of November 2024 was mediated by France and the United States; the truces of 2026 were brokered by the United States, which announced a framework agreement between the two governments on 26 June 2026. Hezbollah rejected it.

About 479,000 Palestinian refugees were registered in Lebanon in Freedom House's report on 2024, though about 210,000 lived there. They cannot acquire citizenship, have no political rights and are barred from 39 professions.