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Languages of Stateness in South Lebanon's Palestinian Gatherings: The PLO's Popular Committees as Twilight Institutions

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  • Nora Stel

Abstract

type="main"> Public authority beyond the state has often been seen as isolated from the state and/or constituting a threat to the state. Recent scholarship, however, has started to conceptualize ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ forms of public authority as closely connected and interdependent. This article contributes to this theoretical shift by means of a qualitative case study of public authority in Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon. Lebanon's Palestinian camps are routinely characterized as ‘states-within-the-state’, undermining the sovereignty of the Lebanese state. Yet, as this article demonstrates, both a generic state idea and the specific Lebanese state system constitute crucial benchmarks for the Popular Committees that govern informal Palestinian settlements. The article therefore conceptualizes the Popular Committees as ‘twilight institutions’ and explores the ‘languages of stateness’ that they adopt both communicatively, vis-à-vis Palestinian competitors, and coordinatively, vis-à-vis Lebanese counterparts. This reveals that the Popular Committees emulate the Lebanese state institutions they come into contact with, to bolster their own authority. They do this partly to be viable interlocutors for Lebanese state institutions; this suggests that the Popular Committees’ non-state authority might validate rather than challenge state authority in Lebanon, and that state and non-state authority can be mutually constitutive.

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  • Nora Stel, 2016. "Languages of Stateness in South Lebanon's Palestinian Gatherings: The PLO's Popular Committees as Twilight Institutions," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 47(3), pages 446-471, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:devchg:v:47:y:2016:i:3:p:446-471
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    1. Christian Lund, 2011. "Property and Citizenship: Conceptually Connecting Land Rights and Belonging in Africa," Africa Spectrum, Institute of African Affairs, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, vol. 46(3), pages 71-75.
    2. Kate Meagher, 2012. "The Strength of Weak States? Non-State Security Forces and Hybrid Governance in Africa," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 43(5), pages 1073-1101, September.
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