Fractionalization and reform: a framework of political collaboration with application to Lebanon

Abstract

How does fractionalization affect political collaboration on reform? We develop a theory to explain observable variation in legislative output over time and policy areas. We show how the properties of a reform project determine the extent to which fractionalization affects political collaboration on reform. We apply our framework to the case of Lebanon and present mixed-methods evidence based on a novel comprehensive dataset of legislative activity and 32 interviews with parliamentarians, ex-ministers, and other high ranking officials. Our findings contribute to explaining ambiguous evidence in the literature on the political economy of reform.

Appendix: Interview evidence

This section provides an overview of the makeup of the interview evidence, the sampling strategy, the sample, and the interview framework. This study draws on accounts of thirty-two expert-interviews with high ranking political actors of all factions in the parliament, within a guideline based, semi-structured interview approach. The interview sample is designed to capture the viewpoints and narratives of all major factions represented in the Lebanese parliament. Reflecting and merging the narratives about specific contentious political issues of all parties involved enables an analysis detached from the subjective ideological realm of the interviewee. The interview framework, therefore, focuses on specific instances of reform currently discussed in the parliamentary debate.

The interviews are based on guidelines with open-ended questions to allow for the free association of the interviewees towards the motives discussed (Hollway and Jefferson 2000, 2008; Mason 2002). The interviews are coded and analyzed following the Rubin and Rubin (2005) method of predefined coding structures. The approach requires a definition of the key concepts and themes as well as the relationship between them, based on literature reviews and the elaboration of hypotheses (Rubin and Rubin 2005, p. 206). The Rubin and Rubin approach is suitable for the analysis since the research questions, hypotheses, and the epistemological framework was laid out before the commencement of the research process.

1.1 Interview sample

The sampling strategy focuses on political actors in their role as active Members of Parliament, former Ministers of State, government officials or high-ranking party members, and reflects the viewpoints of all major political parties. The participants have been chosen according to party affiliation and exposition to, or membership of, the budgetary or economic committee in the parliament. By focusing on political actors on economic and budgetary issues, the sampling assured to rely on participants that should have the resolution to financial and socioeconomic questions as their core field of expertise and daily work. What is more, participants of economic and budgetary committees are the actors most likely to comprehend the extent to which economic conditions pose a threat to the current economic order. Lastly and as to be discussed below, the process of introducing laws should originate from initiatives of Members of Parliament that introduce legislative proposals into parliamentary committees. Since parliamentarians often cannot craft legislation themselves, the interview sampling includes members of economic and financial councils of political parties, as well as economists and researchers from ministries and international organizations that support the process of legal drafting.

The central goal of the selection process of interview participants was to obtain the viewpoints of all major factions represented within the parliament and government. That way, we control for ideological and organizational differences in attitudes towards collaboration among parties. The sampling process allows one to establish a coherent picture of each participants’ and party’s narratives to define the “problem” under consideration (such as economic crisis, income inequality, fractionalization), the problems’ respective origins, and the proposed solutions. All interviews have been conducted between February 2017 and March 2018 in Beirut. Table 5 provides an overview of interview participants.

Table 5 Overview of interviewee affiliation

1.2 Interview framework

Figure 3 provides an overview of the interview framework. Fields shaded in dark gray represent the phenomena of interest, namely the phenomenon of differing perceptions of the same set of economic challenges, and the phenomenon of collaboration among political parties.

Fig. 3

Interview framework for expert-interviews (own illustration)

The interview framework is structured in four themes. The first theme elicits the narratives and perceptions of the challenges related to economic downturn or financial pressure. Participants should explain how they assess the severity of the economic and budgetary pressures, what they identify to be causes, and which solutions the interviewees personally and, in particular, their party offers to resolve related problems. Lastly, the interviewees should relate to the extent to which perceived economic and financial pressures influence their work and potentially facilitate political collaboration.

The second theme focuses on the influence of a party’s constituency. In particular, the interviewees were asked to reflect on the extent to which characteristics of their supporter base influence their assessment of specific policy proposals. A tax hike proposal served as a focal point of discussion about the fairness of redistributional measures. Reflecting on the needs of a party’s supporter base, in particular with regards to the relative impact of a policy proposal such as impactful as the tax hike proposal, then, enables an assessment of the extent to which a party takes relative income inequality into account for their decisions on collaboration.

In the third theme, interviewees were asked to reflect on the impact of fractionalization, that is, the high number of parties involved in negotiations, and political polarization. There are two reasons why these concepts were discussed within the same theme, although their theoretically different transmission channels could have suggested otherwise: (a) the question design should avoid suggestion as of hinting at the origins of polarization; (b) interviewees were likely to conflate the two in the same answer. The interviewees should, therefore, indicate in which instances a high number of negotiating partners hinders collaboration, and in which instances these can be overcome. The same applies to the concept of polarization, which the interviewees were asked to define before. That way, the interviewees should indicate to which extent geostrategic, sectarian, or other ideological polarization influences the mechanism by which fractionalization and polarization influence collaboration.

Lastly, the fourth theme focused on general patterns of collaboration within the parliament and the committees, in which an interviewee was a member. That way, previous answers could be reflected and contextualized with examples given by the interviewees.