Consociation without reconciliation: two logics of post-conflict order in Lebanon

Societies that implement power-sharing arrangements after conflict often succeed at preventing renewed violence while at the same time experiencing poor governance, low civic trust, and corruption. In this article, I argue that this outcome reflects a fundamental tension between two logics of post-conflict political order: consociationalism and political reconciliation. Consociationalism theorizes peace as a problem of managing relations among communal elites, and defines success as the prevention of renewed violence. Political reconciliation theory theorizes peace as a transformation in relations between citizens and the state, and among citizens themselves, one that demands credible institutions, inclusive citizenship, and ongoing civic contestation. Drawing on Lebanon's post-Ta’if order as a paradigmatic case of corporate consociationalism, I specify three mechanisms through which the consociational logic constrains legitimate post-conflict order: institutional capture erodes state credibility, exclusionary boundaries fix political membership in rigid communal categories, and static equilibrium inhibits the civic contestation that reconciliation requires. This analysis reframes consociational outcomes as peace without reconciliation and proposes a framework for evaluating post-conflict power-sharing beyond the prevention of violence.