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1 1 (May 12, 2022)

handle is hein.crs/govefsw0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional SResearch Service Lebanon's 2022 Parliamentary Elections May 12, 2022 Lebanon plans to hold parliamentary elections on May 15, the first since the emergence in 2019 of a protest movement calling for the removal of the country's ruling political elite. Parties allied with the March 14 political coalition-which seeks close ties with the United States, France, and Saudi Arabia- hope to win a majority in parliament. The 2018 elections resulted in a parliamentary-and therefore cabinet-majority for the March 8 political coalition of Hezbollah and its allies, which seeks close ties with Syria and Iran (see Figure 1). As of 2022, forces opposed to Hezbollah remain splintered, and some analysts question whether the election can overturn the current March 8 majority. The relative strength of Hezbollah and its allies in the next government may impact congressional consideration of additional aid to Lebanon, as the country struggles with an economic crisis the World Bank described as possibly among the top three most severe crises episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century. Lebanon's Confessional System Shapes Elections Lebanese politics operate through a confessional system, which divides posts among the country's various religious groups in proportions designed to reflect each group's share of the population as of the 1932 census. This system is the organizing principle for the parliamentary elections: Lebanon's electoral law assigns each seat in the country's 15 electoral districts to a specific religious sect (see Table 1). This ensures that Muslims and Christians are equally represented among the 128 Members of Parliament (MPs), as required by the Taif Accords that ended the country's 1975-1990 civil war. Elections are administered via a system of proportional representation. Candidates run as part of an electoral list, which must receive a certain percentage of votes (known as the electoral threshold) for its members to win seats. Voters may cast a preferential vote to select a single candidate within their chosen list. Some analysts see this mechanism as favoring established elites, making it difficult for less- established candidates, including women, to win seats. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov IN11924 CRS INSIGHT Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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