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Negotiations and Contestations: Exploring how inter-institutional dynamics shape aid provision in Lebanon
Abstract
As a response to the high levels of economic vulnerability among citizens and refugees in Lebanon, the Government of Lebanon, along with international and national partners, devised the 2017-2020 Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (LCRP). The LCRP aims to “respond to these challenges in a holistic, comprehensive manner through longer term, multi-year planning” (Government of Lebanon and the United Nations 2019). Though the LCRP frames the Lebanese government as a highly invested actor, the government has struggled to provide a detailed policy vision and leadership. As a result, municipalities as well as local and international organizations have led the response. Building on Ferguson and Gupta’s concept of transnational governmentality (2002), this paper explores the process through which state and non-state governmentality feature in the LCRP. This paper draws on the case of a recent cash transfer program in Lebanon that took place between 2017 and 2019 and was designed as an integral part of the LCRP. The cash transfer program was funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development and implemented by the United Nations World Food Program. Although the program was initially conceptualized to harmonize the funding and programming of multiple short-term humanitarian and longer-term, state-led development programs targeting Lebanese citizens and Syrian refugees, it evolved to focus purely on short-term humanitarian relief for Syrian refugees. Drawing on textual analysis of program reports and ethnographic research conducted in Lebanon with development workers involved in the planning and implementation of the cash transfer program, this paper traces the program's evolution to illustrate how disparate institutional priorities and negotiations over planning shaped the final design of the program. This paper explores how different actors understand their role in the current configuration of the transnational aid system in Lebanon. In doing so, this paper illuminates how the apparent division between state and non-state aid provision is produced through development and humanitarian discourses and practices. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the effects of this purported state/non-state division on the Lebanese government’s response to social, political and economic insecurity.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Lebanon
Sub Area
None