Constitution of Lebanon

The 1926 charter whose National Pact arithmetic distributes power by sect.

Overview

Promulgated May 23, 1926 under the French mandate, the Lebanese Constitution established a parliamentary republic, but its lived character comes from the unwritten National Pact of 1943, allocating the presidency to a Maronite Christian, premiership to a Sunni Muslim, and speakership to a Shia Muslim, with confessional ratios in parliament. The Taif Agreement of 1989, incorporated as constitutional amendment, ended the civil war, rebalanced Muslim Christian parity, and weakened the presidency. It remains the textbook case of consociational constitutionalism, stabilizing coexistence at the cost of entrenching sectarian identity in law.