The Rise of the “Resistance Axis”: Hezbollah and the Legacy of the Taif Agreement

Abstract

Hezbollah’s direct military presence in Syria and Iraq confirms that their actions transcend Lebanon as a political stage. But why can Hezbollah still not be contained within the boundaries of Lebanon? Exploring how the Taif Agreements both tamed Hezbollah’s rhetoric while simultaneously laying the conditions for transnational activities, this article argues that the conditions of the Taif Agreement have assisted in the rise of Hezbollah’s self-coined Resistance Axis. Post-Taif, Hezbollah has tended relationships with the external forces that helped broker the peace while unlocking the potential in the exceptional decision to allow Hezbollah to retain arms in the name of “resistance.”     

Democratization in East Asia in the late 1980s: Taiwan breakthrough,Hong Kong frustration

Political history took an unexpected turn in East Asia in the late 1980s. The booming movement in Hong Kong had gone downhill and suffered defeat, while the authoritarian Taiwan state actively sponsored genuine democratic reforms. What then explains the Taiwan democratic breakthrough and the Hong Kong democratic frustration? This article argues that conventional explanations offered in the modernization, the dependency, and the class literature—such as culture, liberal colonialism, wealth, new middle class, bureaucratic-authoritarian state, crises, and absence of conservative class coalition—are unable to account for the divergent paths of democratic development in Taiwan and Hong Kong. As an alternative, this article presents a model that highlights the importance of conjuncture factors. It is argued that since Taiwan and Hong Kong have shared similar structural conditions, researchers have to bring in conjuncture factors such as the historical event of Chinese unification, the capacity of the political agency to promote democratic reforms, and the strategy of protest in order to explain the Taiwan breakthrough and the Hong Kong frustration.     

In other journals

Historical Foundations of the Common Law, Second Edition. S.F.C. Milson . London 1981. Butterworths. pp xii &; 475 (incl. Index). £18 cased, £11.95 limp.?

Marriage Settlements 1601–1740. Lloyd Bonfield. Cambridge 1983. Cambridge University Press, xviii &; 136 pp. (incl. index). £19.50.

The English and Colonial Bars in the 19th Century, Daniel Duman, London, 1983. Croom Helm, xv + 228 pp. (incl. index). £13.95.