Municipal Politics and COVID‑19 in Lebanon: Governance and Decision-Making amid Overlapping Crises
The COVID‑19 pandemic and the rapid spread of the virus have posed new challenges to governments worldwide. In Lebanon, the outbreak has exacerbated the existing economic and political crisis that has shaken the country since fall 2019. In the midst of these overlapping crises, local municipalities in the country have become critical actors in both developing and enforcing regulations surrounding the containment of COVID‑19 within their communities. Little, however, is known about why and how local politicians are adopting local measures, nor what drives their compliance with national directives. This research partnership enables a collaboration between academic scholars and a Beirut-based policy-focused think tank with the aim of identifying and understanding challenges and opportunities for local governments in Lebanon to effectively contain and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, while minimizing the deleterious effect of these policies on vulnerable populations, including refugees, within their localities.
At a national level, with the exception of sporadic lockdowns and travel restrictions, governance has been severely limited. In the midst of these overlapping political, economic, and health crises, local municipalities in the country have become critical actors in developing and enforcing regulations surrounding the containment of COVID‑19 within their communities. Most recently, in late January 2021, municipalities have been called upon by national authorities to enforce quarantines of international travellers. Moreover, over one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon (the largest per capita host of refugees in the world), live alongside host communities across the country within the jurisdictional boundaries of these municipalities. Municipal governance of the pandemic, therefore, also shapes the governance of refugees in this context.
The COVID‑19 crisis provides an opportunity to critically assess central-local relations in Lebanon, and is an important case through which to understand regional variation in local policy-making in a time of crisis. While the scale of crisis in Lebanon may present an ‘extreme case,’ the lessons learned from the research questions undertaken in this project are of critical relevance to cases well beyond the Middle East, in contexts where decision-making and implementation related to the containment of COVID‑19 and more recently the administration of vaccination requires coordination between national and local authorities amid a context of uncertainty.
This research partnership will enable a collaboration between academic scholars and The Policy Initiative, a newly-established Beirut-based policy-focused think tank, with the aim of enhancing and expanding on their existing work on COVID-19. While The Policy Initiative has been collecting and documenting official regulations adopted by municipalities since May 2020, this project will extend its current work by exploring in-depth the motivations and factors informing decision-making by local officials through a survey of local politicians (mayors), and the development of an index of the stringency of municipal policies.
This research outputs will include academic research articles, as well as policy briefs that directly aim to advance our understanding of how local leaders are making decisions regarding the regulation and containment of the spread of COVID‑19 and vaccines distribution, identify challenges and opportunities for local governments in this critical policy arena, and will inform policy responses and preparations for future public health emergencies.
