Uneven and combined development and the Lebanese state: sectarian governance, political economy, and fragmented sovereignty

Lebanon is frequently portrayed as a dysfunctional political system characterised by sectarian division, corruption, economic crisis, and institutional paralysis. While these descriptions capture important features of Lebanese politics, they do not adequately explain why repeated episodes of severe instability have failed to generate structural political transformation. This article addresses that puzzle through the framework of uneven and combined development by introducing the concept of Combined Hybrid State Formation (CHSF). CHSF is developed as a middle-range analytical framework that explains how uneven development, sectarian governance, and fragmented sovereignty interact as mutually reinforcing mechanisms to reproduce hybrid political orders through recurring crises and institutional adaptation. Drawing on a theory-guided qualitative case study of Lebanon, the article combines historical institutional analysis with process tracing of the 2019 financial collapse and its political aftermath. The analysis demonstrates that successive phases of state formation produced a layered institutional order in which uneven development reinforces dependence on communal intermediaries, sectarian governance institutionalises those intermediaries within the state, and fragmented sovereignty disperses authority across domestic and external actors, limiting comprehensive reform. The interaction of these mechanisms transformed the post-2019 crisis into a process of institutional adaptation rather than structural political transformation, producing a paradoxical combination of instability and resilience in which crises became mechanisms of political order reproduction rather than catalysts for change.