This individual is a guest contributor. MEI is not able to assist with contact requests.
Wassim Maktabi is an Economist and Researcher at The Policy Initiative in Lebanon. His research interests include political economy, development economics, and public finance. He is currently working on projects focused on Lebanon’s financial crisis, the pandemic, and public procurement. Previously, Wassim was a researcher at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies where he mapped the legislative production of the government and parliament and co-authored the Government Monitor series. He also contributed to the conceptualization of a coding methodology to monitor the attention of policymakers, culminating in an automated legislation tracker. Wassim volunteered as a data officer at Open Map Lebanon and holds a BA 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.
