Since the end of the civil war in 1990 and the Syrian occupation in 2005, Lebanon has held relatively free elections and maintained power-sharing arrangements among its diverse ethnic groups. Yet the country is hardly a democratic success story: Even as governance quality remains poor, incumbents maintain an ironclad grip on electoral power. The Art of Not Governing offers a fresh analysis of Lebanon’s political challenges that foregrounds local elections and institutions—and delivers a new account of how local politics influence broader patterns of state-building and democratization.

Christiana Parreira explores the tension between central and local authority in post–civil war Lebanon, drawing on years of fieldwork, more than 140 interviews, and original survey research. She traces the formation of a party cartel system that maintains control at the national level by inhibiting opposition at the local level, intervening in municipal politics to reward loyalty and punish opposition. Central state elites use their control over resource distribution to obtain monopolies on local political power, preventing local governments from acting independently. Challenging prevailing framings of local governments as guardians of democratic accountability, The Art of Not Governing sheds new light on why recently democratized states fail to represent the interests of their citizens.