Rights
Confessional power-sharing under the 1926 Constitution and the Taif Agreement
The 1926 Constitution, amended in 1990 to incorporate the Taif Agreement, distributes the presidency, premiership and speakership among religious communities and divides parliamentary seats equally between Christians and Muslims.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — National. Lebanon is a unitary state with confessional allocation of office.
Governing law
- Lebanese Constitution 1926, as amended in 1990
- Taif Agreement 1989, incorporated by constitutional amendment
- Law No. 250 of 1993 establishing the Constitutional Council
In practice
Taif transferred executive power from the President to the Council of Ministers collectively and equalised Christian and Muslim parliamentary representation, replacing the earlier six-to-five ratio. The Constitution's preamble commits to abolishing political confessionalism as a national goal while the operative text entrenches it, a tension that has never been resolved. The Constitutional Council may review laws on referral by defined officeholders — not by individuals — and has periodically been unable to function for want of appointments. Prolonged presidential and governmental vacuums are a recurring feature rather than an aberration.