From the 1920s to the 1940s, the Shi'i monthly journal, al-'Irfan, published a myriad of articles focusing on the importance of family and education. Various articles appeared during this period, emphasizing the need to educate Shi'i children, Shi'i parents' responsibility for educating their children, and the importance that schooling has on Shi'i society. This paper will examine the changes that took place during the French mandate particularly in the 1920s and 1930s that propelled a calling for educational reform among Lebanese Shi'as. This paper will argue that the formation of the Lebanese nation propelled a sense of Shi'i identity and communitarian belonging that sought education as a way of integration into the imagined nation. As a minority in the nationalist paradigm during a time of great national uncertainty, an importance was placed on reforming the educational system within the Shi'i community as it tried to negotiate its place in society. In order to situate and integrate themselves within the new Lebanese nation, the Shi'a community made efforts to remedy its continuing educational shortcomings vis-a-vis other Lebanese sects. This paper will first look at the historical changes that took place under the Mandate, which propelled communal belonging among Lebanese Shi'as, followed by an analysis of the modifications made to the educational system as the first private schools catering to the Shi'a community were established. As the most historically marginalized and underrepresented group in Lebanon, the French Mandate brought about many changes in the way Shi'as came to conceptualize their place in the nation as a community and sectarian entity. In 1926, the Shi'as of Lebanon were formally recognized for the first time as a separate legal sect. During this time, the state of education among the Shi'as was extremely poor and lacking in comparison to the other Lebanese sects largely due to the community's political and economic marginality. This paper will look at status of education among the Shi'as during the Mandate and the efforts made among the community to combat their educational shortcomings as a means of producing Lebanese Shi'a nationals. This push for educational reform reflects the Shi'as sense of communitarian belonging, which began to emerge during this time. This paper will also examine the first two Shi'a schools, the al-'Amiliyya and al-Ja'fariyya schools, which signify this process of educational reformation made by the community in an effort to integrate into the new Lebanese nation-state as a unified sect.

A rich literature in public health focuses on the determinants of health, which can be broadly categorized by their emphases on (1) individual characteristics and behaviors, such as genes, nutrition, exercise, smoking etc.; (2) the physical environment, such as safe water, clean air, housing, and health services; or (3) the social and economic environment, such as socioeconomic status and gender. The emphasis on social determinants has been increasing in the past decade; however, despite the importance of political institutions in shaping the social environment in which individuals live, the functioning of political systems is generally not regarded as a critical determinant of health outcomes. At a minimum, the public health literature posits an indirect linkage via effects on economic growth. In the discipline of political science, the politics of health are receiving increasing attention in current scholarship, yet much of this research focuses on the macro-level, citing how long-run historical processes shape overall health systems and welfare regimes and neglecting political on the individual-level. Based on field research on Lebanon, this paper argues that political competition and, particularly, the nature of Lebanese political sectarianism have a measurably detrimental effect on the health of the population and are key drivers of health disparities. The paper opens with a brief overview of the health status of the population, including health disparities, and then provides a summary description of the health system in Lebanon. The paper then traces the effects of specific formal and informal political institutions on health inequalities, showing through qualitative and quantitative data how partisanship and sectarian loyalties mediate access to basic health care. Based on these findings from Lebanon, the paper then suggests how the arguments apply to additional countries in the Middle East and in other developing regions. The research for this paper is based on over 300 qualitative, in-depth interviews with providers and beneficiaries from the five main sectarian affiliations in Lebanon as well as an original national mass survey (n=2,000) conducted in spring 2008 on political behavior and access to welfare in Lebanon.

This paper presents some preliminary results of a three-year project funded by the German Research Foundation. The project is a comparative study of the political, social, economical, and cultural development of political parties in Lebanon in historical perspective. The aim of the project is to identify development tendencies of parties in Lebanon and general structural problems for parties within the Lebanese political system. The civil war period (1975-1990) was crucial for the further development of political parties in Lebanon as it caused many internal changes (leadership, organisational structure, funding) and also shifted the complex power structures within the fragmented political system in Lebanon. The experience of regional, by party and militia operated civil administrations after the break-down of the state in Lebanon altered the perspective of the parties and influenced their post-war policies until the present day. This paper will compare the civil administrations created by two Lebanese parties and their militias during the civil war in Lebanon: The "Civil Administration of the Mountains" which was created by the Druze Progressive Socialist Party and its militia and its counterpart formed and maintained by the Christian-Maronite Kataeb Party and the Lebanese Forces militia coalition. The comparison is based on the nascent theory of "orders of violence", presently shaped by the German Political Science Association's working group "Orders of Violence". Grounded on the assumption that wars have also a constitutive character, they can be regarded as alternative forms of social order, as a social structure and process, with an economical, political, and symbolic dimension. In (civil) war situations established social rules of a society were abrogated while new social orders were established and perpetuated by use of violence. Violent non-state actors create more or less institutionalized structures which can be classified in the range between two opposing ideal types of orders of violence: Warlord figurations and quasi-states. Different aspects of the two selected civil administrations like their basic concept, the services which were provided, their financing, and the connection with party and militia will be compared. By emphasizing the differences and similarities between them, they shall be classified on the basis of the above mentioned theoretical framework. The paper is based mainly on following sources: First, interviews with party officials of both parties who participated in the administrations. Second, analysis of primary sources regarding the civil administrations. Third, secondary literature about civil administrations, war economy and militias in the Lebanese civil war.