Handling the pandemic in times of crises and revolution: COVID-19 and the reconfiguration of Lebanon's power relations

When, in February 2020, the SARS-COVID-19 pandemic reached the Arab Levant, Lebanon had just entered the most severe socio-economic crisis ever experienced in its post-colonial history. The beginning of the economic crisis walked in parallel with the explosion, on October 17, 2019, of an unprecedented popular uprising demanding a radical redefinition of the Lebanese sectarian neoliberal order on more equal and inclusive bases. The uprising took hold of the streets for months, and radically called into question the authority of all the political forces which had been ruling the country since the end of the Civil War (1975-1990). Amid this unprecedented crisis of legitimacy, the pandemic was immediately exploited by the Lebanese ruling class to impress a severe blow to the street demonstrations, as well as to revivify the personalistic and clientelistic mechanisms of aid provision that had historically underpinned their power base. At the same time, the COVID crisis imposed a further burden on the national accounts and the average living conditions of Lebanese citizens. Building on the Gramscian notion of integral State, the following contribution aims at offering a first insight into the extent and the dynamics through which the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in Lebanon influenced the trajectories and the articulation of the process of reconfiguration of the country’s socio-political order triggered by the October 17 uprising and the economic crisis. To this end, the contribution will explore in a relational perspective the dialectics between the impact of the pandemic on the uprising and the economic crisis, and, on the other hand, the impact of the crisis and the uprising on the State management of the pandemic.