Adonis Diaries

The Fear of Supporting Political Reform

May 24, 2018 | English and Arabic |

Laura Paler, Leslie Marshall, and Sami Atallah

This brief examines the extent to which people are willing to support political reform in Lebanon. Using a randomized petition experiment with 2,496 citizens across the country, it is demonstrated that, although people wish to abolish the confessional political system, they are less willing to express that publicly.

This is largely due to fear of being sanctioned by their family members, community, and political leaders.

Looking at various socio-economic groups, lower income citizens—like their upper income compatriots—do not support sectarian politics.

Lower income citizens group is less willing to take public political action.

Concerning confessional groups, Christians express more support for confessional politics than their Sunni and Shia counterparts. Though Sunnis are less likely than other confessional groups to take public action.

The study suggests that an effort to effect change would either need to target those who are less fearful of voicing support for reform or would need to reduce the level of fear among sections of Lebanese society that otherwise would support reform.

(And what about the upper income compatriots? How did you subdivide this group and their source of wealth? What do they want to change and how?)

(So, No group or religious sect want to express what they want to reform? And who are the reformist citizens? What if you search for the reformists and then conduct the grouping?)