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Sami Zoughaib is an Economist and Research Manager at The Policy Initiative. His research focuses on Lebanon’s political economy, governance structures, macroeconomics, and local economic development. In addition to managing the research team, he also coordinates and conceptualizes TPI’s research projects. Prior to joining TPI, Sami was a researcher at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, where he led and worked on several projects related to international donor conferences, parliamentary elections, and monitoring legislative production and reform. In addition to his affiliate platforms, Sami’s research has been published in Governance, Economic Research Forum, openDemocracy, L’Orient-Le Jour, L’Orient Today, Annahar, and Al-Akhbar. Sami holds an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Reading and a B.A. in Economics from the American University of Beirut.
When elections don’t matter? How new parliamentarians can improve the politics of power-sharing arrangements
Power-sharing arrangements remain a paradoxical phenomenon. As a powerful tool to stop the guns of conflict, they tend to kill the ingredients for peace by preventing politics from changing. Three countries with such arrangements have recently held elections in which outcomes have — ostensibly — led to such political change. Change, however, has yet to materialize and so far the elections have brought more of a perennial companion of power-sharing arrangements: political gridlock.
