Now, I can only answer this one partially, why has it had such trouble recovering its former glory? I think the answer lies predominantly in the confessional system of government that it has. There are of course myriad other factors, especially it's location. Not only as a Mediterranean port, especially important with Beirut, but it's neighbourhood. It is bordered by Syria to the North and East and Israel to the South. This has made it extremely susceptible to regional tensions and with a large Shia population Iran is of course eager to get involved and the Hezbollah militia is Iran's most successful proxy army. I will not be touching on these issues, hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will be able to elaborate on this more thoroughly than I. This answer will, then, focus on the confessional system and how it has affected Lebanese politics and led to national divisions and weakened the state of Lebanon meaning it couldn't properly recover from the Civil War of the 70s and, in fact, made it so susceptible to outside forces.

So, to understand Lebanon I think we need to understand first Lebanese politics. Lebanese politics is driven by an idea called confessionalism, this is basically a power sharing agreement that was engineered in the 1940s by the elites of the Sunni and Maronite communities dividing up the government along ethnic/religious lines. The divisions power were based upon the results of the1932 Census, incidentally the last one to be taken in the country. The presidency went to a Maronite; the premiership to a Sunni; and the speakership to a Shi'ite. All public offices, including those in the National Assembly, the Armed Force, and the Central Bank were assigned according to confessional and sectarian affiliation, on the proportional principle of 5 Muslims to every 6 Christians. Lebanon, you may be aware of, has many different factions and religions and came about as a country after the French desired to have a Christian majority state in the Levant. This led to an awkward mix of religious and ethnic groups. To try and stifle the communal tensions, the Lebanese devised this system of confessionalism. This system was at the route of the Civil War and it's inability to effectively deal with the changing demographics of Lebanon, namely the growing Muslim communities, especially the Shia in the south, the influx of Palestinians and the shrinking Christian communities.

However, in the 50s Lebanon was living in the golden age of the confessional system, helped by its rather liberal banking system. Yet even then it suffered from a minor civil war as the confessional divisions bubbled away and there was a struggle for the early identity of Lebanon (highlighted in the struggle between the westward looking Chamoun and the Arab facing Jumblatt). It did provided banking services for pretty much all of the middle east and this led to a period of economic boom for the country. Yet, during this period, unlike in other Middle Eastern countries, there was never an attempt to nation build, or to foster a strong, central state. This was unlike it's fellow Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria or Iraq. In the eyes of the ruling elite, the state was viewed as essentially a negative institution and they monopolised it doing their utmost to restrain it's capabilities. This led to people have stronger ties to their community, tribe, or religion rather than the nation. The central state, already small and underfunded, also suffers greatly from the confessional divisions: it's bureaucracy often functions as a traditional, feudal, and fractured society unable to supply the people with basic needs. This role is thus filled by the sectarian and local leaders and militias, weakening the legitimacy of the state in it's citizens eyes.

Furthermore, the army has never really been able to monopolise the use of force due to the confessional divides. It has largerly stayed out of internal struggles. Fouad Shihab, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, began this policy when he ordered the army to stay out of the 1958 civil due to fears that it would split into it's differing sectarian factions. When the army has become involved, such as during the 1975-1990 Civil War, it has split along sectarian lines. The result of such weak armed forces has been the proliferation of armed sectarian militias, created for the self-defence of their communities, at times headed by the political elite (such as the Kataeb Party and it's Phalangist Militias led by the Gemayel family).

In an interesting study, the International Centre for Transitional Justice held a focus group that found that the presence of communal and political insecurity of the Lebanese people has fed into and fostered an atmosphere of clientelism, with public officials and civil servants providing loyalty to politicians, rather than to the state and ultimately the citizenry. As Saad, a Lebanese man said to the ICTJ 'We do not have a purely civil society. If there is a problem, we go to a religious or confessional leader instead of going to the judicial system or the state.'

Effectively, then, whilst Beirut did enjoy a golden period, the sectarian tensions were bubbling away under the surface. The confessional system of power led to elitism. There has been a self perpetuating capture of the state by a sectarian elite lacking accountability and one that undermines political commitment to the public good. The confessional divides within the government have bled into all layers of society, in championing the divides it has thrown Lebanon into a sort of feudal competition. The varying sects do not ascribe to a central power, but rather compete to exert their own view of Lebanon and their own political expectations upon one another.

One can organise the political situation in Lebanon as one of many competing nations occupying the physical space of the same state. That is to say, Lebanon's sectarian groups have permeated the state identity, each with a stronger pull than that of the central government creating competing nationalisms, differing social imaginaries and incompatible multiple modernities. The idea of modernities and differing nationalism refers to the way communities imagine themselves, their relationship to other communities and their expectations, forming the basis for the proliferation of ideas and a difference in imaginations of the state that often form contradictions as incompatible ideas are formed. Lebanon is a deeply divided state then, the sectarian embers already burning from it's creation by the French have been flamed and stoked by the confessional system of government.

Furthermore, at the end of the brutal civil war, the Ta'if agreement did little to address the issues that caused the civil war. In conflict theory parlance, it resolved the conflict but it did not transform it into something that could positively change the country. In reinforcing the confessional power-sharing, albeit with reforms, Ta'if has come to be regarded as reconciliation not for the people, but for the elite, “the Ta’if Accord helped to ‘reconcile’ warlords, not the people. It has also further reinforced loyalty to sect or sectarian political leader and not to the country, thus sectarian identity still trumps national identity in Lebanon. Whilst putting an end to a 15-year bloody and brutal conflict, Ta'if failed to offer any basis for long-term resolution in the country, it has failed to move from what can be termed a 'negative peace' to a 'positive' peace. The ICTJ concludes that in the more than two decades since Ta'if, Lebanon has yet to mend the multifaceted injuries of the past.

Selected Bibliography

Atzili, Boaz. "State Weakness And “Vacuum Of Power” In Lebanon". Studies in Conflict & Terrorism Vol. 33 Issue.8 (2010): 757-782.

Barak, O. (2003) Lebanon: Failure, Collapse, and Resuscitation. in R. I. Rotberg (ed) State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press.

Choueiri, Youssef. "Explaining Civil Wars In Lebanon". in Youssef Choueiri (ed) Breaking The Cycle: Civil Wars In Lebanon. 1st ed. London: Stacey International, 2007. 21 - 46.

Evron, Yair. War And Intervention In Lebanon. London: Croom Helm, 1987. Print.

Ghosn, Faten, and Amal Khoury. "Lebanon After The Civil War: Peace Or The Illusion Of Peace?".The Middle East Journal Vol. 65 Issue. 3 (2011): 381-397. Web.

International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ),. Failing to Deal with the Past: What Cost to Lebanon?. 2014a. Web. 3 Mar. 2016.

International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ),. How People Talk About The Lebanon Wars. 2014b. Web. 3 Mar. 2016.

Mattar, Mohammad. "Is Lebanese Confessionalism To Blame?". in Breaking The Cycle: Civil Wars In Lebanon. Youssef Choueiri. 1st ed. London: Stacey International, 2007. 47 - 66. Print.

Salamey, Imad. "Failing Consociationalism In Lebanon And Integrative Options". International Journal of Peace Studies Vol. 14 Issue. 2 (2009): 83-105. Print.

Zorub, Daniel, “Lebanon: A State of Many Nations & a Menagerie of Many Modernities”. Global Societies Journal, Vol. 1 (2013) 92-100