Consociational Power-Sharing in the Arab World as Counter-Revolution

This paper argues that consociational power-sharing in the Arab World is intrinsically counterrevolutionary. The academic debate on consociational power-sharing has largely overlooked this because 1) it pre-supposes class inequalities and over-emphasises state stability, and 2) it is limited by a broader misunderstanding of counterrevolution, in which the concept is reduced to momentary reactions to revolution. By critiquing class and state assumptions in consociational power-sharing literature, and presenting a nuanced conceptualisation of counterrevolution, this paper seeks to bring the debate closer to the concurrent revolutionary episodes against the consociational arrangements of Lebanon and Iraq, and inspire more inclusionary state-(re)building arrangements in the Arab World.