Lebanon is a country in the Levant region of West Asia, bordering Syria and Israel, that gained independence in 1943. It is a unitary parliamentary republic operating under a unique political system known as Confessionalism. This system is a type of consociationalism that formally distributes political and institutional power proportionally among the country's numerous religious communities, which include 18 recognized groups.
The system originated with the unwritten National Pact of 1943, which was intended to ensure a balance of power between the Christian and Muslim populations following the end of the French Mandate. It works by reserving the highest executive posts for specific sects: the President must be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of Parliament a Shia Muslim. The distribution of parliamentary seats and civil service positions is also allocated along confessional lines. This arrangement was based on the last official census conducted in 1932.
The system was re-established and amended by the Taif Accords in 1989, which ended the 1975–1990 Civil War. The Taif Accords changed the parliamentary seat allocation to an equal 5:5 ratio between Christians and Muslims, correcting the previous imbalance, but maintained the sectarian allocation of the top three executive posts.
Lebanon's political structure is closely connected to regional geopolitics, particularly through the influence of the Iran-aligned Shi'a political and militant group Hezbollah. Since 2019, Lebanon has faced one of the world's worst economic crises, with its currency, the Lebanese pound, losing over 98% of its value, pushing the poverty rate to over 80%. This crisis is widely attributed to the corruption and political fragmentation fostered by the confessional system.