Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

There is a growing understanding that vertical relationships matter for peacebuilding efforts that respond to local needs. There is little consensus, however, on how to study verticality in peacebuilding empirically. This article asks how we can understand responsiveness to needs through vertical relationships in post-conflict spaces. To answer this question, the article develops an analytical framework of vertical relationships as a peacebuilding function. Arguing that responsiveness to needs is a critical factor in building a legitimate peace, the article applies this framework to the case of municipal waste management during the waste crisis in Lebanon in 2015. Building on 31 interviews in two Lebanese municipalities, the article illustrates the complexity of vertical relationships in a post-conflict space. It concludes that vertical relationships enable responsiveness to needs by drawing on political belonging, thus promoting a fragile peacebuilding dependent on national political divides.

Keywords

local peacebuilding local development vertical relationships waste management municipalities Lebanon

Introduction

In July 2015, the Naameh landfill, which had collected garbage from Beirut and surrounding municipalities for 19 years, was closed. With nowhere to put the trash, the private company that collected waste in Greater Beirut stopped its activities. As a result, waste accumulated on the streets in and around Beirut, leaving smelly, sometimes burning, mountains of trash (Kraidy, 2016). As the situation dragged on, the inability of the central government to agree on a solution to resume waste collection services sparked public rage against the political elite. Protesters gathered in front of the Lebanese parliament demanding essential services such as waste management, reliable electricity, and potable water. However, as protests continued and were violently pushed back by the police, the demands for government accountability and critique of the political elite grew (Azzi, 2017; Beirut Report, 2015a, 2015b; Kraidy, 2016).

Simultaneously, as the national inability to decide on waste management plans dragged on, waste management on the local level took different forms. Several municipalities affected by halted waste management were forced to provide a service they had not been in charge of for the last two decades or more.¹ Other municipalities, outside of Greater Beirut, did not experience the same kind of emergency. However, the waste crisis was a reminder that garbage is a mounting challenge for the whole of Lebanon. In these municipalities, practices of waste management focused on solving long-standing issues with accumulated waste or preventing the occurrence of a crisis like the one in Beirut.

In a post-conflict country like Lebanon, the government’s inability to accommodate the waste management needs of the population and the discontent with the state that it sparked highlighted that even mundane issues are related to everyday peace (Mac Ginty, 2014). Roberts (2011) emphasises that to sustain peaceful states, responding to local needs and everyday priorities of the population is essential, because, “To connect citizenry to the state, public preferences must be fulfilled by the latter” (p. 417). This article defines peacebuilding as efforts aimed at societal transformations that decrease the risk of violence and promote development in post-conflict societies (Björkdahl & Höglund, 2013, p. 291), arguing that peacebuilding efforts need to connect to the everyday needs of the people. This argument builds on the conception that legitimacy is a cornerstone of peaceful state–society relations (Brinkerhoff et al., 2012) and that service delivery is a means to achieve legitimacy (Mcloughlin, 2015). Such a conceptualisation opens up for viewing peacebuilding as a process where everyday management of public goods is part of it. Furthermore, by emphasising that legitimacy gains depend on people’s expectations of service delivery, this article highlights contextual and perceptive aspects of peacebuilding. Building on 31 semi-structured interviews with municipal councillors, municipal employees and civil society actors in two Lebanese municipalities, Bourj Hammoud and Saida, this article identifies waste management as a public good of importance to Lebanese local peacebuilding. Furthermore, the article asks how we can understand responsiveness to waste challenges through vertical relationships between local governments and national actors and what it means for local peacebuilding.

The point of departure for vertical relationships as a peacebuilding function is found in the literature that argues that vertical relationships between local and national, as well as international, levels and actors are of importance for peacebuilding, as they are critical to developments occurring on the ground (Lundqvist & Öjendal, 2018; McCandless et al., 2015; Mitchell & Hancock, 2012; Ramsbotham, 2005, p. 51). However, apart from linking top-down and bottom-up processes of peacebuilding, there is little consensus in the literature on how to study verticality in peacebuilding empirically. In this article, I develop an analytical tool to analyse vertical relationships through the concepts of complementarity, autonomy, and agency. Empirically, the article analyses how municipalities respond to local waste management needs through their vertical relationships, furthering our understanding of how and what kind of local peace is built.

To pursue this argument, the article starts with a theoretical conceptualisation of vertical relationships as a peacebuilding function. Second, the methodological approach is described, including semi-structured interviews in two cases. Third, the article contextualises conflict and local developments in Bourj Hammoud and Saida. Fourth, the article analyses local waste management in the cases and how vertical relationships affected the way waste was handled on the ground through the notions of complementarity, autonomy, and agency. In doing so, the article elucidates what these efforts mean for local peacebuilding. Finally, the article concludes by indicating how analysing vertical relationships furthers our understanding of local peacebuilding in Lebanon and beyond.

Vertical Relationships as a Peacebuilding Function

An Analytical Tool

In understanding vertical relationships as a peacebuilding function, this article applies a broad understanding of peacebuilding, arguing that building peace necessitates societal transformations that are considered legitimate, because, by influencing people’s judgement of the state, legitimacy determines whether people will perceive its actions as just or unjust (McLoughlin, 2015). According to Brinkerhoff, Wetterberg, and Dunn (2012), service delivery is one way in which post-conflict governments can build legitimacy. However, the relationship between service provision and legitimacy gains is non-linear and complex, dependent on people’s expectations on the role of the state, what services it should provide as well as perceptions of how and by whom public goods are provided (Brinkerhoff et al., 2012; McLoughlin, 2015). This article explores the complexity of local service delivery, such as waste management, through the particular perspective of vertical relationships.

Verticality implies linking actors and efforts at different levels of governance to produce results that impact peacebuilding and development for society as a whole (McCandless et al., 2015). In this article, the concept of vertical relationships implies relationships across levels of governance, including formal and informal institutions as well as individual relationships between actors. Focusing on municipal—central state relations, local governments are part of a layered authority with specific rules and regulations of multilevel governance. However, vertical relationships also incorporate space for interconnections that move more freely across levels and scales. This includes, for example, relationships with individual actors or non-state organisations related to another government level or spatial scales, such as national politicians or experts in a field. This conceptualisation of vertical relationships draws on the fields of multilevel governance and transscalarity (Schakel et al., 2014; Scholte, 2014). However, as this article is concerned with local peacebuilding, the local government is the primary level of relevance (Fakhoury, 2018; Hooghe & Marks, 2002).

According to Mitchell and Hancock (2012), vertical relationships matter for locally grounded peacebuilding because, through good relationships, national authorities are more likely to accept locally defined and initiated policies, as well as to adapt nationally decided projects to the local context. As such, vertical relationships enhance the possibility of responding to local needs. Importantly, when national, regional, and local levels work towards the same goal, local governments can pursue practices relevant to the local context, thus promoting local development and peace. This alignment of interests and activities between the local and national is the basis for complementary vertical relationships (Mitchell & Hancock, 2012, pp. 34, 175). Emphasising mutual interests and multiple actors working for shared outcomes, complementarity enables us to see whether “certain institutions ‘belong’ together” (Crouch, 2010, p. 118). Complementary institutions (or actors) are nested through certain kinds of similarities and can compensate for each other’s lack of capacity, enabling policy results. As such, Crouch (2010) highlights that complementarity produces “a stable model that is mutually reinforcing” (p. 125).

However, the reader knowledgeable of the Middle East would argue that emphasising complementarity in vertical relationships borders on clientelism, patronage or in Arabic “wasta,” defined as the use of connections to attract clients and obtain resources (Egan & Tabar, 2016). In basic terms, wasta is based on the provision of services in exchange for power, but it also reinforces hierarchy and the patron’s power (Hamzeh, 2001). As wasta explains how individuals in Lebanon navigate their daily lives, pointing out its similarities to complementarity in vertical relationships highlights the fine line between vertical relationships that build local peace or move power upwards and, in the Lebanese case, reproduces sectarianism as a characteristic of the state (Egan & Tabar, 2016; Hamzeh, 2001; Majed, 2016). Whether through wasta or other power structures, “Vertical relationships are by definition hierarchical” (McCandless et al., 2015, p. 5). However, as the practice of wasta teaches us in the Lebanese case, clientelistic relationships demand loyalty towards the elite but allow for support in exchange (Hamzeh, 2001). As such, this hierarchy can be strategically used by local actors seeking to promote their aims. Nevertheless, pointing out the hierarchies of vertical relationships highlights the double nature of complementarity as part of vertical relationships. As much as complementarity may promote local peacebuilding policies, it runs the risk of undermining local autonomy and ownership (Mitchell & Hancock, 2012. p. 177). Consequently, complementary vertical relationships are not an obvious peacebuilding function, but further conceptualising vertical relationships through autonomy and agency of local actors can help us understand how vertical relationships may build peace.

While complementarity may enhance local capacity, the right of the local level to make decisions on local matters, as well as access to the necessary funds and human resources available to implement them, in other words, autonomy is critical. Autonomy implies decision-making rights of subnational governments as well as localised responsibilities, without the interference of higher authorities (Cheema & Rondinelli, 2007, p. 6). Thus, if local governments are autonomous, they can pursue policies that they believe fit the local context (Brinkerhoff, 2011; Kälin, 2004). However, autonomy is a slippery concept; degrees of autonomy vary, as do the possibilities for autonomy when available resources fluctuate. While more autonomy implies more self-determination, which might enable local policies adapted to the local context, it also disassociates the local from the larger picture, and, in peacebuilding terms, creates “local zones of peace” with little impact on peace as a whole (Mitchell & Hancock, 2012, p. 20). As such, for local government autonomy to enhance peace in society as a whole, autonomy does not equate to independence from the larger structure nor personal autonomy of local leaders. Rather, local autonomy implies a political dialogue between citizens and local institutions who have particular autonomy from central power and the necessary funds to pursue it (Benstead, 2017; Dazey, 2017; Falleti, 2005; Olsen, 2016, p. 27; Susen, 2018, p. 53). As such, autonomy, as a concept, reinforces the need for “belonging,” as emphasised by complementarity in vertical relationships while simultaneously highlighting the imperative of local agency.

In determining which developments are of importance on the ground, and how they come about, vertical relationships as a peacebuilding function go beyond institutional structures of the state and draw on the agency of actors. In this reading, agency refers to the ability to engage in actions that have an impact or transformative power. However, agency is not separate from power structures or cultural context and relies on three things: an appropriate occasion, knowledge, and access to power (Feenberg, 2017, p. 98; McNay, 2016). Referring to local peacebuilding as an everyday practice, critical peacebuilding scholars argue that local agency is continuously expressed through, for example, the acceptance, cooperation, or resistance to the agenda of national or international actors. Although acknowledging that agency varies amongst individuals, this view draws on perspectives within resistance studies, that even the smallest actions can shape outcomes (Bayat, 1997; Scott, 1991). In this view, non-complementary vertical relationships or vertical relationships that do not grant the local level autonomy are constraining, but they do not determine every possibility for local actors to act and express agency (Björkdahl & Gusic, 2015; Richmond & Mitchell, 2012, pp. 5ff). However, agency does not necessitate “peaceful” actions. Nevertheless, analysing how local actors use agency within vertical relationships can highlight how local actors promote local developments and what they imply for peace.

Analysing how local development objectives are enabled by vertical relationships adds to our understanding of how vertical relationships matter for locally grounded developments and peacebuilding. As argued above, complementarity, in emphasising embeddedness and belonging; autonomy, in defining the fine line between independence and structures that enable local action; and agency, in its reliance on individual capacity, ideally complement each other as parts of vertical relationships as a peacebuilding function. However, complementarity, autonomy, and agency can also contradict the peacebuilding potential of vertical relationships. Thus, analysing vertical relationships through the concepts of complementarity, autonomy, and agency advances a more nuanced and deeper understanding of how vertical relationships may, or may not, promote peacebuilding. What follows in this article is an empirical exploration of these nuances in two Lebanese municipalities.

Thus, analysing vertical relationships through the concepts of complementarity, autonomy, and agency advances a more nuanced and deeper understanding of how vertical relationships may, or may not, promote peacebuilding. What follows in this article is an empirical exploration of these nuances in two Lebanese municipalities.

Methodological Approach

This article focuses on local governments and how local actors perceive the municipality’s ability to fulfil local needs through vertical relationships. The empirical discussion builds on 31 semi-structured interviews with municipal councillors, municipal employees, and civil society actors in two municipalities. The interviewees were strategically sampled to represent views from within the municipality as well as civil society organisations working in the local arena. Interviews ranged from 45 min to 2 hr and were conducted in English, French, or Arabic by the author. By interviewing a fraction of the men and women, young adults and old who are engaged in the local space, the interviews capture the views of people with influence, or aiming at influence, although sometimes within a very particular sphere.² Using a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), the author explored the meanings of vertical relationships through the themes of complementarity, autonomy, and agency in the two municipalities. Such an explorative interpretation emphasises that to improve on our understanding of vertical relationships as a peacebuilding function, we need to interrogate how actors perceive and use vertical relationships in empirical settings and what this means for local peacebuilding.

Lebanon’s conflictual history is most known for its brutal 15-year-long civil war between numerous religiously and ideologically motivated warring parties. In 1989, the war ended through the Ta’if Agreement dividing state power between sectarian elites, thus ending the war but continuing Lebanese sectarian governance, which had contributed to sparking its outbreak in 1975 (Khalaf, 2002). Since 2005, the main division in Lebanese politics is between the pro-Syrian March 8 bloc, gathering parties such as Hezbollah, Amal and the Free Patriotic Movement, and the pro-West and Saudi March 14 bloc including, amongst others, the Future Movement, Kataeb, and Lebanese Forces (Osoegawa, 2013). Despite the continued national divides, post-war Lebanon provided the population with space to engage in politics closer to home by reinstating municipal elections in 1998. With divides and political stalemate continuing in Lebanese national politics, municipal elections are generally less divided along sectarian lines and have continuously been held every 6 years (Baroud, 2004, p. 8; Salamey, 2014, p. 152).

The two municipalities analysed in this article are Bourj Hammoud and Saida. Bourj Hammoud neighbours Beirut and is a highly urbanised area whose inhabitants are mostly working class from a mix of sectarian and national backgrounds. However, as the Lebanese registry of citizens is based on where your ancestors lived, a majority of municipal voters are Armenian (Salamey, 2014, p. 118). In Bourj Hammoud, remembrance of past suffering and present feelings of alienation amongst Armenians has reproduced their communal identity as, yet another, sect in Lebanon, although they share religious practices with many Lebanese (Christian Orthodox and Catholic) and hold Lebanese citizenship (Geukjian, 2014). During the civil war, the municipality became an Armenian stronghold surrounded by fighting amongst other groups, cementing the perception of an Armenian municipality (Nucho, 2016, p. 23). Today, the majority of the municipal councillors have an Armenian heritage, and most of them are members of the Armenian Tashnag party. Nationally, Tashnag is a member of the March 8 political coalition (Osoegawa, 2013). However, Tashnag holds only 3 of 128 seats in the parliament (Salamey, 2014). Thus, Bourj Hammoud has an Armenian majority which is part of a national minority.

Saida is a predominantly Sunni city surrounded by Christian and Shia villages and Palestinian refugee camps. During the civil war, Nasserite militias influenced by Pan-Arab sentiments controlled the city and cooperated closely with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (Hanf, 1993, pp. 302, 604). Since the end of the war, the growing influence from the Hariri family in national as well as municipal politics challenged the Nasserite dominance. As of today, the Hariri family exercises considerable influence in the local space, promoting a liberalised approach to economic development through the inclusion of moderate (mostly Sunni) political and civil society elites (Ghaddar, 2016). In municipal politics, the opposing sides are made up of the allies of the Nasserites, on one side, and allies of the Hariri family and the Future Movement on the other. This continues the contestation of power that emerged in the aftermath of the civil war but is now more about the direction of municipal politics than sectarian divides.³ In 2010 and 2016, the group aligned with the Hariri family and Future Movement won the municipal elections ( The Monthly, 2016), making the municipal council a close ally of the national political bloc March 14, of which the Future Movement is one of the most prominent political players (Osoegawa, 2013).

Bourj Hammoud and Saida are two urban areas, similar in terms of size of population and size of the municipal council. The municipalities differ in terms of sectarian belonging as well as alliances to the national level (Ghaddar, 2016; Nucho, 2016). As such, exploring perceptions of complementarity, autonomy, and agency as a basis for vertical relationships furthers our understanding of how the two municipalities respond to waste management needs and build local peace.

Local Waste Management

Building Local Peace or Trapped by Political Divides?

As mentioned in the introduction, waste management reached the level of crisis during the summer of 2015 triggering dissatisfaction with the state and violent outbreaks. In the two municipalities analysed in this article, Bourj Hammoud was directly affected by the waste crisis creating a situation of emergency. One interviewee explained,

All of a sudden, we have to rent trucks to pick up the garbage; we have to hire employees, workers to do garbage collection, and all of this is happening suddenly. For 18 years, the municipality did not have the equipment, nor the human resources to deal with garbage issues. (Int. 29, municipal councillor, November 2015)

Located in Greater Beirut, Bourj Hammoud had not dealt with waste management since the government privatised it in the 1990s (Leenders, 2012), leaving them unequipped and unprepared. Besides, since those contracts were financed by government funds previously allocated to municipalities, the municipalities did not have financial resources, nor did they receive additional funding for dealing with waste during the crisis (Int. 29, municipal councillor, November 2015).

Saida, on the other hand, was not affected by the waste crisis of 2015 but had a long history of problematic waste management. During the last 40 years, waste had accumulated in what was referred to as “the waste mountain.” At the time of interviews, the municipality had recently established a new waste management plant to treat waste from the municipality as well as 16 surrounding municipalities. In comparison to the gloomy situation in Bourj Hammoud, one interviewee in Saida explained,

We used to have a garbage problem, the Garbage Mountain, which was smelly and caused health problems. They were able to fix this problem and to install the plant that treats the garbage. […] Instead of the mountain, now we have a big garden. (Int. 42, civil society actor, November 2015)

Although the two municipalities had different experiences of waste management in 2015, waste management was a pressing issue in both. If waste management is taken seriously as a local need, responding to that need becomes a peacebuilding practice (Roberts, 2011). However, to understand how waste management responses came about through vertical relationships, the following sections analyse complementarity, autonomy, and agency in Bourj Hammoud and Saida.

Complementary or Noncomplementary Vertical Relationships for Waste Management

Analysing how vertical relationships to the central state matter for enabling developments on the ground, a first key argument emphasises complementarity in the relationship between local and national arenas. In Saida, this was emphasised as key, referring to relationships to both national as well as international actors. One interviewee elaborated,

I have to say I have very good support from the politicians. With Hariri, Siniora, the other, Mikati one of the ministers, also the minister of environment, minister of interior, I have good support. Very good support. Also, financial support. […] We cannot do anything from within the budget of the municipality. Government support or borrowing or we had some donations, from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and from UNDP recently. (Int. 18, municipal councillor, June 2015)

In this municipality, national and local politicians are described as working towards the same goal allowing them to build the waste management plant and initiate new waste management plan. This confirms the importance of complementary vertical relations to the central state, Lebanese political elites and international actors for local developments, and emphasises relations as nested, producing a feeling of belonging (Crouch, 2010). However, the politicians mentioned above also share sectarian belongings with the majority of the municipal council; thus, relationships reproduce sectarianism and wasta in Lebanon (Hamzeh, 2001; Majed, 2016). However, the creation of a garden on top of the former waste mountain in this otherwise grey and condensed city implied that these complementary vertical relationships channelled international and national funds towards municipal initiatives. In this sense, although coupled with reproducing sectarian divides, complementary vertical relationships did manage to solve developmental challenges on the ground and fulfil local needs.

However, in Bourj Hammoud, relationships with the central state cannot be described as complementary. According to several municipal councillors interviewed, the municipality has a complicated relationship with the central government (Int. 12, 29, 30, 31). Talking about local initiatives that require national ratification, one interviewee emphasised the complicated bureaucracy involved in getting government approval for decisions that require municipal expenditures above the US$13,000 limit of municipal spending. As he claims, “since everything requires spending money, [it] is just stopped” (Int. 12, municipal councillor, May 2015). In addition, several interviewees emphasised that the political stagnation and division between the two political blocs in Lebanese national politics, March 8 and March 14, matters for how vertical relationships impact the local level. Asked whether the municipality has relationships to its political allies on the national level, the municipal councillors answered, “we have relations, but it doesn’t help” (Int. 30, municipal councillor, November 2015) explaining that its Armenian political allies are too few and not powerful enough. In comparison to Saida with national connections to the Future Movement within the March 14 bloc, the Armenian contacts on the national level make up a small minority of three parliamentarians within the March 8 bloc.

However, in the midst of the waste crisis of 2015, the municipality became the centre of national attention. As space to accumulate waste was sparse, the government proposed that a previously closed landfill within the municipality’s borders would be reopened for 4 years as a temporary solution (Abu-Rish, 2015; Färnbo, 2018). In November 2015, the municipality’s position was that it should remain closed, as claimed by one municipal councillor,

We had the [garbage] mountain […], which closed 17 years ago. All the garbage of Lebanon used to come here for 20 years. Now it is closed. The political party [Tashnag] and the municipality say that it was the end. (Int. 30, municipal councillor, November 2015)

Considering the crowdedness of the municipality and the negative environmental impact from the previous landfill still affecting the local space, the opposition to the proposal was strong amongst both municipal councillors and civil society actors. Another municipal councillor explained that the government’s plan lacked sufficient details and strategies to deal with environmental concerns for them to consider the proposal for reopening the landfill. Nevertheless, pressure on the municipality to comply with governmental plans was strong. Asked whether the municipality had been under pressure from the government, the same municipal councillor answered, “a lot. And [we] still are” (Int. 29, municipal councillor, November 2015). This demonstrates the presence of power in vertical relationships between the municipality and the central state (McCandless et al., 2015), and despite municipal opposition, the landfill did reopen as a temporary solution in 2016 (Massena, 2017). Thus, hierarchy trumped local agency. As the municipality lacked complementary relationships with the central state, they were unable to cooperate with national actors to find solutions to local and national problems resulting in the government imposing its decisions on the local space. In this situation, non-complementary vertical relationships (temporarily) solved waste management needs in the Greater Beirut area. However, as the national government imposed the decision, it did not serve as a local peacebuilding function in Bourj Hammoud. Instead, the decision to reopen the landfill sparked dissatisfaction, and Kataeb, a political party in opposition to Tashnag in the municipality and part of March 14 nationally, mobilised to block the entrance to the landfill in August 2016 (Reuters, 2016). Although, in retrospect, not changing the course of events, it demonstrates the heterogeneity of local spaces and the divisions that unsatisfactory fulfilment of needs may provoke amongst local actors.

As the municipality lacked complementary relationships with the central state, they were unable to cooperate with national actors to find solutions to local and national problems resulting in the government imposing its decisions on the local space.

Lacking Autonomy but Still Dealing With Waste

However, the other side of the story is how the events of the waste crisis evolved in the local space in 2015. At the time, Bourj Hammoud found itself without governmental support but with mounting piles of trash on its streets. As mobilisation against the national government’s inability to solve the issue increased, so did anger towards the municipality. As one municipal councillor claimed,

Unfortunately, the public knows only that the one responsible for his local affairs is the municipality. Therefore, the one who is to blame for any problems in the locality is the municipality, and people are not interested in finding the root causes of the problems. He sees the garbage right beside him, and he demands to have that problem solved. (Int. 29, municipal councillor, November 2015)

As anger grew against the trash in the streets in the middle of the summer heat, the municipality found itself confronted with the public expectation that they solve an issue the national government had removed from their list of responsibilities more than two decades ago. Lacking funds, personnel, and equipment, as well as the regulations giving the municipality the legal autonomy to act on the issue, the municipality initiated dialogues with local community leaders of different sects to explain the source of the problem. As the municipality explained the government’s decisions and regulations restricting municipal actions on waste management, the immediate anger against the municipality eased.

However, dialogue with the local communities did not ease the actual problem with waste on the streets. As the situation continued, the municipality had no other choice than to become waste collectors, as the municipal councillor continued to explain,

We are doing it [collecting garbage], and our budget is very strained because of it […]. But, we are cutting back on other things, other projects that were already in process. But we have to because we have no other option. (Int. 29, municipal councillor, November 2015)

Thus, despite a lack of decentralised autonomy to act on waste management, the municipality did act, using its agency to solve immediate local needs. At the time, the government appeared to turn a blind eye, suggesting a slight rise in municipal autonomy during times of crisis. Nevertheless, because of the lack of municipal autonomy and resources to handle waste, the municipal solution to the waste crisis was no better than previous solutions, creating a local landfill for the municipality’s waste. Such a solution was a great disappointment to a civil society actor interviewed in the study who exclaimed that instead, “We should recycle or do something” (Int. 26, civil society actor, November 2015), thus accusing the municipality of not being proactive enough. Municipal councillors were not ignorant to such calls; however, according to them, the lack of local autonomy in the Lebanese multilevel governance blocked such developments, as one interviewee explained,

The municipality is until now not free. We do not have decentralisation; it is still centralised. […] If we have decentralisation, all the municipalities can collect the garbage and recycle and have a lot of money [from selling recyclables], but until now we don’t have decentralisation. Until now, the municipality can’t solve this problem. (Int. 30, municipal councillor, November 2015)

In Bourj Hammoud, the lack of complementary vertical relationships and autonomy within the vertical relationship to the state illustrates how vertical relationships may, at times, fuel conflict rather than promote local peacebuilding. However, also in Saida, their complementary relationship to the state gave the municipality a certain type of autonomy. In interviews, civil society actors confirmed the municipal councillors’ perception of the importance of vertical relations. Yet, as much as the political connections provide for success, interviewees reveal how it has previously hindered development. Asked about the implementation of the waste management plant, one civil society member emphasised the politicisation of development on the ground and linked the start-up of the factory to the change in the municipal council in 2010,

[…] the factory should have been established a long time ago, during the presence of [former Mayor 2004-2010]. [Saudi] Prince Walid [ben Talal] granted 5 million USD to the municipality to establish it but no decree […] they want to do this law during the presence of the municipality who is affiliated to the Hariri political party. (Int. 38, civil society actor, November 2015)

As the quotation shows, local politics are part of national political divides and competition between the March 8 and March 14 blocs. When the local contestation between the Nasserite political block (supporting March 8) and the Hariri/Future Movement block (supporting March 14) resulted in the Hariri-affiliated list winning the election in 2010, the project was swiftly approved. However, representing a particular political party in the local arena implies that the municipality has difficulties in moving beyond the political positions of the national political party, demonstrating that complementary vertical relationships do not give the municipality autonomy for itself, but rather provide them with a feeling of autonomy in relation to issues of common concern. One municipal councillor explained,

I always say, thanks to our representatives […] we can have projects for 10 million USD, 20, 30. But we don’t have projects for 200,000 USD. This is really a challenge. For example, people want to light the promenade. Really, we don’t have 300,000 USD to invest there. This represents a challenge; you want to do something. You know the solution, but you cannot do it. (Int. 46. Municipal councillor, November 2015)

Thus, the excellent relations with influential national elites in Saida appear to be beneficial in some ways but do not free the municipality from the centralised political system and lack of decentralised autonomy. The room to manoeuvre in the local arena, which the theoretical approach embraces, is here shown to play out through national influence, affecting how interaction takes place on the ground.

the excellent relations with influential national elites in Saida appear to be beneficial in some ways but do not free the municipality from the centralised political system and lack of decentralised autonomy.

Exercising Agency to Deal With Waste

The third argument of vertical relationships as a peacebuilding function claims that even if vertical relationships are characterised as complementary and may allow for (some) autonomy, the local government exercises agency in the relationship. However, this article illustrates that the type of agency exercised differs depending on the type of vertical relationship. In Saida, the municipality is exercising its agency within the relationship to the central state. As one municipal councillor explained,

You have to defend your city; you have to have it always in mind. […] you have to bring your projects, you have to go to the prime minister, you have to talk to the ministers, seek budgets […]. I would say that we wouldn’t have succeeded without their support. (Int. 46, municipal councillor, November 2015)

In Saida, agency is exercised within existing vertical relationships, using the state hierarchy to promote its ideas to more powerful actors, cooperating and accepting nationally or internationally proposed projects. However, in Bourj Hammoud, the municipality connected with actors outside of the vertical relationship to the central state to promote their view. As the waste crisis of 2015 evolved, local associations mobilised to oppose the suggestion of reopening the previously closed landfill in the municipality and developing alternative solutions. Although a passive bystander at first, the municipality eventually engaged in the opposition initiated by local civil society, as explained by one interviewee,

What happened was that after we went to all of these conferences and roundtables and everything, then the municipality just woke up. So later on, we had an article published in the journal of the political party [Tashnag] and the municipality. So, we had done the hard work, but they got the credit. (Int. 26, civil society actor, November 2015)

According to the interviewee, the municipality connected to the mobilisation of the civil society to oppose the proposed governmental plan. Due to its non-complementary vertical relations to the state, the municipality pursued its agency outside of the vertical relation trying to modify nationally imposed solutions.

Although Bourj Hammoud was able to oppose the government proposal at first, the story reemphasises how national political divides in Lebanon manifest themselves in municipal politics and reflect on the limited ability of local agency to resist national decisions, emphasising that although local actors may resist, agency is pursued within larger structures of power (McNay, 2016). The experiences of Bourj Hammoud show that when complementarity is lacking or contained within a sectarian system in which local actors have little say, the municipality’s ability to act locally is limited by Lebanese multilevel governance that gives little autonomy to the local level. Thus, sectarianism as a political system, designed to divide power, promote inclusion, and end the hostilities of the civil war, can effectively counteract local possibilities to answer to local needs and build a locally legitimate peace.

sectarianism as a political system, designed to divide power, promote inclusion, and end the hostilities of the civil war, can effectively counteract local possibilities to answer to local needs and build a locally legitimate peace.

This reflection also holds in Saida. Although Saida was able to respond to local needs through its complementary vertical relationships, municipal politics also reproduced national politics and dividing lines in the local space, illustrating the fine line between vertical relationships that build peace or fuel conflict (Mitchell & Hancock, 2012). In 2018, the backside of complementarity became evident as Saida’s waste management success was angrily questioned. Perceived as a success in 2015, it did not take long until the waste management plant became a hazard for the local space with garbage piling up. Originally built to process 300 tonnes of waste per day, the plant received 600 tonnes daily in 2018 as part of a national arrangement to solve the waste crisis in Beirut. Again, dissatisfaction with the fulfilment of local needs mobilised demonstrations against the plant, organised by local civil society organisations and the Nasserite municipal opposition, with support from Saida MP Osama Saad (Bashour & Solh, 2017; Zaatari, 2018). As such, vertical relationships mattered for responsiveness to local needs in Saida through an emphasis on complementarity rather than local autonomy, and as such, the local peace built was a peace that reemphasised existing political divides, accepted for as long as needs were met, but fuelling conflict when solutions no longer met local expectations. As such, analysing vertical relationships as a peacebuilding function has enabled us to see how the risk of conflict temporarily decreased in 2015, but rather than transform Lebanese state structures, local waste management was performed through Lebanon’s political and conflictual divides.

Conclusion

This article analyses how local experiences of vertical relationships are seen to influence local needs hindering or promoting a locally legitimate peace. While peacebuilding literature rarely conceptualises verticality beyond the local to national link (i.e., Donais, 2015; Lundqvist & Öjendal, 2018), this article has developed an analytical framework to nuance and promote a deeper understanding of vertical relationships between local governments and national actors in post-conflict contexts. The framework emphasises three themes: complementarity, meaning local and national actors striving towards the same goal; autonomy, meaning local capacity to make decisions and have the necessary resources to implement decisions; and agency, meaning local actors’ capacity to promote locally initiated policies. Furthermore, the article applies the analytical framework in two Lebanese municipalities, Saida and Bourj Hammoud, analysing municipal waste management at the time of the waste crisis in Lebanon in 2015, asking how we can understand local responsiveness to needs through vertical relationships and what it means for local peacebuilding.

As the article has shown, promoting local peacebuilding through service delivery is not a simple endeavour, but filled with numerous complexities pertaining to local and national power relations and expectations. Building on 31 semi-structured interviews, the article illustrates the complexity of vertical relationships in a post-conflict space. Saida has complementary vertical relationships to mainly Sunni national actors, but most importantly to the Future Movement political party. Through its vertical relationships, the municipality experiences a feeling of autonomy in being able to implement large projects that do respond to local needs but, simultaneously, they have a lack of autonomy for smaller projects. Also, local actors make use of their agency within the complementary vertical relationships. However, as perceptions emphasise the complementary vertical relationships in Saida, it shows how it also distorts possibilities for local peacebuilding over time, making peace dependent on existing political structures and fragile to local dissatisfaction and change. Bourj Hammoud, on the other hand, perceives its vertical relationships to national actors as non-complementary, and relationships to national political figures are insignificant for implementing local activities, perceiving its autonomy as circumscribed by national regulation. As a result, the municipality makes use of its agency outside of local to national vertical relationships, engaging with, for example, civil society actors in the local or national space. Nevertheless, Bourj Hammoud was unable to use its local agency to provide transformative developments that met local expectations, thus not furthering a locally legitimate peace. As such, the article illustrates how the local is a political space not isolated from other levels of government and national divides, de-romanticising the local and exposing how locally contextualised practices both promote peace and fuel conflict. In Lebanon, politicising the local space allows for a more in-depth analysis of the players present, moving away from religious sect as the only possible dividing line (Ghosn & Parkison, 2019).

As such, the article illustrates how the local is a political space not isolated from other levels of government and national divides, de-romanticising the local and exposing how locally contextualised practices both promote peace and fuel conflict.

Analysing vertical relationships in two Lebanese municipalities and their struggles for managing waste in 2015, the article deepens our understanding of vertical relationships and the provision of local needs. However, in defining an analytical framework that equally emphasises complementarity, autonomy, and agency for vertical relationships to promote local peacebuilding, the article illustrates the complex relationships between the three themes and how easily one aspect overrules the others. Acknowledging the lack of Lebanese decentralisation and the limits it has for municipal autonomy (Salamey, 2014), the article emphasises the need for further research to contextualise vertical relationships in relation to local peacebuilding. Furthermore, in light of the Lebanese October protests in 2019, partly spurred by the political elite’s inability to deliver adequate services (Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, 2019), the question is no longer whether a lack of waste management can create dissatisfied citizens and fuel conflict. However, as the discussion in this article has shown, even when delivered, public goods may not be able to produce legitimate local peace if the way they are delivered does not meet expectations. Thus, the question for further research is whether Lebanese dissatisfaction with service deliveries will develop new dividing lines between citizens and the ruling elites and produce demands for a different kind of local peace.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Hanna Leonardsson

Notes

References

Abu-Rish

(2015, Winter). Garbage politics. Middle East Report (MER277). Middle East Research and Information Project. https://merip.org/2016/03/garbage-politics/

Azzi

(2017). Waste management systems in Lebanon. The benefits of a waste crisis for improvement of practices [Master’s thesis]. KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Baroud

(2004). Gouvernance Locale et Réforme Institutionnelle au Liban: Les Municipalités, un outil d’innovation? Analyse et étude de cas (1998-2004). The World Bank and The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.

Bashour

Solh

M. E.

(2017, August 9). Saida’s disappointing waste management experience. https://ecocentra.wordpress.com/2017/08/09/saidas-disappointing-waste-management-experience/comment-page-1/

Bayat

(1997). Un-civil society: The politics of the ‘informal people.’ Third World Quarterly, 18(1), 53–72. http://doi.org/10.1080/01436599715055

Beirut Report. (2015a, August 15). Invisible garbage, visible activism. http://www.beirutreport.com/2015/08/invisible-garbage-visible-activism.html

Beirut Report. (2015b, August 5). Lebanon’s garbage crisis: A blessing in disguise? http://www.beirutreport.com/2015/08/lebanons-garbage-crisis-a-blessing-in-disguise.html

Benstead

L. J.

(2017). A local Islamist advantage? Toward a theory of national and local service provision in Algeria. In Baker

Kao

Lust

Lynch

(Eds.), Local politics and Islamist movements (pp. 69–83). Project on Middle East Political Science & Program on Governance and Local Development. https://gld.gu.se/media/1297/islam-in-a-changing-middle-east.pdf

Björkdahl

Gusic

(2015). “Global” norms and “local” agency: Frictional peacebuilding in Kosovo. Journal of International Relations and Development, 18(3), 265–287.

10.

Björkdahl

Höglund

(2013). Precarious peacebuilding: Friction in global-local encounters. Peacebuilding, 1(3), 289–299. http://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2013.813170

11.

Braun

Clarke

(2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101.

12.

Brinkerhoff

D. W.

(2011). State fragility and governance: Conflict mitigation and subnational perspectives. Development Policy Review, 29(2), 131–153.

13.

Brinkerhoff

D. W.

Wetterberg

Dunn

(2012). Service delivery and legitimacy in Fragile and conflict-affected states: Evidence from water services in Iraq. Public Management Review, 14(2), 273.

14.

Cheema

G. S.

Rondinelli

D. A.

(2007). From government decentralization to decentralized governance. In Cheema

G. S.

Rondinelli

D. A.

(Eds.), Decentralizing governance (pp. 1–20). Brookings Institution.

15.

Crouch

(2010). Complementarity. In Morgan

Campbell

J. L.

Crouch

Pedersen

O. K.

Whitley

(Eds.), The oxford handbook of comparative institutional analysis. Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199233762.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199233762-e-6.

16.

Dazey

(2017). Central-local relations: Issues of autonomy and control within the Union des organisations islamiques de France. In Baker

Kao

Lust

Lynch

(Eds.), Local politics and Islamist movements (pp. 93–99). Project on Middle East Political Science & Program on Governance and Local Development. https://gld.gu.se/media/1297/islam-in-a-changing-middle-east.pdf

17.

Donais

(2015). Bringing the local back in: Haiti, local governance and the dynamics of vertically integrated peacebuilding. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 10(1), 40–55. http://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2015.1010987

18.

Egan

Tabar

(2016). Bourdieu in Beirut: Wasta, the state and social reproduction in Lebanon. Middle East Critique, 25(3), 249–270. http://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2016.1168662

19.

Fakhoury

(2018). Multi-level governance and migration politics in the Arab world: The case of Syria’s displacement. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45(8), 1310–1326. http://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1441609

20.

Falleti

T. G.

(2005). A sequential theory of decentralization: Latin American cases in comparative perspective. American Political Science Review, 99(3), 327–346.

21.

Färnbo

(2018). Skräpet som kväver Libanon. Omvärlden. https://omvarldenberattar.se/libanon-sopkrisen/

22.

Feenberg

(2017). Agency and citizenship in a technological society. In Pitt

J. C.

Shew

(Eds.), Spaces for the future. Routledge.

23.

Geukjian

(2014). An ignored relationship: The role of the Lebanese Armenian Diaspora in conflict resolution (1975–90). Middle Eastern Studies, 50(4), 554–567. http://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2014.886570

24.

Ghaddar

(2016). Machine politics in Lebanon’s Alleyways. https://tcf.org/content/report/machine-politics-lebanons-alleyways/

25.

Ghosn

Parkison

S. E.

(2019). “Finding” sectarianism and strife in Lebanon. PS: Political Science & Politics, 52(3), 494–497. http://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096519000143

26.

Hamzeh

A. N.

(2001). Clientalism, Lebanon: Roots and trends. Middle Eastern Studies, 37(3), 167–178.

27.

Hanf

(1993). Coexistence in wartime Lebanon. Decline of a state and rise of a nation. Centre for Lebanese Studies in association with I.B. Tauris.

28.

Hooghe

Marks

(2002). Multi-level governance and European integration. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

29.

Kälin

(2004). Decentralized governance in fragmented societies: Solution or cause of new evils? In Wimmer

Goldstone

R. J.

Horowitz

D. L.

Joras

Schetter

(Eds.), Facing ethnic conflicts. Toward a new realism (pp. 305–306). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

30.

Khalaf

(2002). Civil and uncivil violence in Lebanon. Columbia University Press.

31.

Kraidy

M. M.

(2016). Trashing the sectarian system? Lebanon’s “you stink” movement and the making of affective publics. Communication and the Public, 1(1), 19–26. http://doi.org/10.1177/2057047315617943

32.

Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. (2019, November 9). LCPS surveyed protesters in Riad al-Solh and Martyrs’ Square on Oct. 23-26. https://twitter.com/LCPSLebanon/status/1193175351641432065

33.

Leenders

(2012). Spoils of truce: Corruption and state-building in Postwar Lebanon. Cornell University Press.

34.

Lundqvist

M. O.

Öjendal

(2018). Atomised and subordinated? Unpacking the role of international involvement in ‘the local turn’ of peacebuilding in Nepal and Cambodia. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 13(2), 16–30. http://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2018.1470023

35.

Mac Ginty

(2014). Everyday peace: Bottom-up and local agency in conflict-affected societies. Security Dialogue, 45(6), 548–564. http://doi.org/10.1177/0967010614550899

36.

Majed

(2016, October 16). In the Arab world, sectarianism is real, sects are not. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/arab-world-sectarianism-real-sects-161012110949666.html

37.

Massena

(2017, November 14). Trash situation still stinks as Lebanon leans on ‘temporary’ landfills. Al-Monitor. https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/11/lebanon-cabinet-asks-cdr-study-expanding-landfills.html.

38.

McCandless

Abitbol

Donais

(2015). Vertical integration: A dynamic practice promoting transformative peacebuilding. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 10(1), 1–9. http://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2015.1014268

39.

Mcloughlin

(2015). When does service delivery improve the legitimacy of a fragile or conflict-affected state? Governance, 28(3), 341–356.

40.

McNay

(2016). Agency. In Disch

Hawkesworth

(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of feminist theory. Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199328581-e-2.

41.

Mitchell

C. R.

Hancock

L. E.

(2012). Local peacebuilding and national peace: Interaction between grassroots and elite processes. Continuum.

42.

The Monthly. (2016). Saida’s municipal elections 2016. http://monthlymagazine.com/article-desc_3928_

43.

Nucho

J. R.

(2016). Everyday sectarianism in Urban Lebanon. Infrastructures, public services, and power. Princeton University Press.

44.

Olsen

J. P.

(2016). Democratic order, autonomy and accountability. In Christensen

Lægreid

(Eds.), The Routledge handbook to accountability and welfare state reforms in Europe (pp. 15–30). Routledge.

45.

Osoegawa

(2013). Syria and Lebanon: International relations and diplomacy in the Middle East. I.B. Tauris.

46.

Ramsbotham

(2005). Contemporary conflict resolution: The prevention, management and transformation of deadly conflicts (2nd ed.). Polity.

47.

Reuters. (2016, August 29). Lebanon’s trash crisis threatens return in summer heat. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-rubbish/lebanons-trash-crisis-threatens-return-in-summer-heat-idUSKCN1141SO

48.

Richmond

O. P.

Mitchell

(2012). Hybrid forms of peace: From everyday agency to post-liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan.

49.

Roberts

(2011). Post-conflict peacebuilding, liberal irrelevance and the locus of legitimacy. International Peacekeeping, 18(4), 410–424. http://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2011.588388

50.

Salamey

(2014). The government and politics of Lebanon. Routledge.

51.

Schakel

A. H.

Hooghe

Marks

(2014). Multilevel governance and the state. In Leibfried

Huber

Lange

Levy

J. D.

Stephens

J. D.

(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of transformations of the state. Oxford University Press. https://www-oxfordhandbooks-com.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199691586.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199691586-e-14.

52.

Scholte

(2014). Reinventing global democracy. European Journal of International Relations, 20(1), 3–28. http://doi.org/10.1177/1354066111436237

53.

Scott