The Policy Initiative
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Building a state with a mission
The Lebanese state has been captured by a political elite that has put its own interest first and continuously failed to build a state that protects and provides for its citizens. This initiative seeks to not only rebuild public institutions but develop them so they address and pre-empt societal needs. Such a state must have an inclusive developmental goal where its role goes beyond fixing the market to actively shaping it. TPI envisions a dynamic, agile, and collaborative organizational capacity, an outcome-based budget, and strategic and efficient capital investment in key infrastructure—including the ports, roads, and energy. The state should not fund its mission and policies with grants and foreign loans, but with taxes that are equitable, progressive, and that provide incentive for productive investment while tackling tax evasion and avoidance.
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07.12.22|ArticleعربيImpoverish and Conquer: How has the Lebanese state responded to the financial crisis?
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Shifting to a new economic paradigm
Lebanon’s extractive economic model that was adopted in the early 1990s has resulted in an unsustainable and jobless growth, prioritized rentier sectors over diversified and robust ones, and led to major inequalities and crises. In light of the country’s financial collapse, this initiative seeks to develop policies to stabilize the macroeconomy, distribute equitably the financial losses, and restructure the banking sector to kickstart the economy. These policies are part of a larger economic vision that transforms the various sectors in a way that they become productive, formal, export-based, and competitive. Lebanon can no longer rely on remittances to sustain its failing economy; it needs to focus on new sectors both in manufacturing and services, including digital economy and creative industry, so it creates a competitive for itself in the region.
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07.14.22|ArticleعربيBuying the Narrative: How Lebanese banks exploited the media to influence public opinion
07.14.22|مقالةengشراء السردية العامة: كيف استغلت المصارف اللبنانية الإعلام للتأثير على الرأي العام
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Advancing socio-economic rights
While Lebanon’s labor market has failed to provide opportunities to the country’s high-skilled job seekers, the financial crisis and the pandemic have caused an unprecedented increase in vulnerabilities and new waves of economic migration. Through this initiative, TPI seeks to protect and develop the country’s human capital by enabling adequate and gender-sensitive social protection and labor rights policies, as well as by encouraging investments in people through accessible education and healthcare. In addition, TPI seeks to study the impact of the crisis on migrant and refugee workers and their increased vulnerabilities linked to their lack of labor rights. We also aim to examine the new trends in labor transformation, with the rise of the “gig economy” which make work temporary, unstable, and low paying, while disproportionately affecting the youth.
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11.04.22|ArticleعربيDistorted Social Contract: The dangerous trajectory of social protection systems in Lebanon
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08.12.22|ArticleعربيIntentions Are Not Enough: Lebanon must adopt the national social protection strategy
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Advocating for fair representation and accountability
Lebanon’s political system, which is based on the distribution of power and resources among the confessional political parties, undermined accountability and failed to represent the interests of the people. This initiative seeks to advance representative institutions through a progressive electoral law that would go beyond confessional quotas and would give equal chance to new candidates and emerging political parties, and electoral strategies that privilege policies rather than clientelistic practices. The initiative also monitors the role and involvement of the youth, women, and the diaspora in the electoral process as voters but also as change makers. While voters should be able to select candidates in an environment free of pressure and fear, holding their elected and appointed officials accountable goes beyond election; and so TPI seeks to strengthen the role of parliament, both in its legislative and oversight roles over the government and other public agencies.
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Leveraging aid for the public good
While Lebanon has long been a major recipient of foreign aid, successive governments have failed to capitalize on the funds to undertake policy and institutional reforms. In this initiative, TPI seeks to examine the priority areas where aid should flow and how to make it effective so it serves the public good and not the interest of the ruling elite. This initiative covers foreign aid directed toward the Lebanese state and its citizens, but also the one supporting refugee populations. TPI also seeks to analyze the aid architecture and its new institutional arrangement to ensure the proper participation of key stakeholders.
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Activating effective local development
While municipalities have wide prerogatives and fiscal autonomy to undertake local development, their ability to do so is constrained by insufficient and deteriorating revenues, weak administrative capacity, and limited understanding of local development and planning. Through this initiative, TPI rethinks decentralized development by assessing the capacity of local authorities and by suggesting policies to ensure public service delivery and local economic development. We aim also to evaluate how municipalities are responding to contain Lebanon’s various crises, what measures they are adopting, who takes those decisions, and how effective they have been. This needs proper electoral representation through fair municipal elections and a governance system that would incentivize elected officers to serve the people.
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Investing in environmental sustainability
Lebanon’s environmental problems are many: Increasing air pollution, polluted water sources, untreated sewage, ineffective waste management, and unprotected natural resources and cultural heritage, compounded by the threat of climate change which is expected to affect agriculture and the coast, among many other things. Through this initiative, TPI seeks to place the preservation of the environment at the center of economic development. To this end, we aim to push for policies to enhance investment in physical capital that protects our natural resources as well as address looming threats such as land degradation and desertification which could exacerbate food insecurities and displacement.
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05.27.24|ArticleعربيClimate, Land, and Rights: The quest for social and environmental justice in the Arab region
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Fostering political and social stability
Domestic political polarization exacerbated by increasing regional tensions render Lebanon a fertile ground for conflict and organized violence. In this initiative, TPI seeks to identify the different forms of violence, their geographies, and their drivers. We are particularly interested in social unrest—between and within Lebanese political or sectarian groups—state violence, tension exacerbated by the presence of refugees, and continued threats and breaches of Lebanese sovereignty. We also seek to identify regional turbulence and tensions and the mechanisms by which they spill over to the domestic landscape.
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