Political party identity, national identity and intergroup conflict in Lebanon: A social identity perspective

MENA Dubai 2003 Abstract

Author Ghalya Saadawi
Copy Many of the interpretations of the 17-year civil war in Lebanon claimed the conflict was confessional, international and/or religious. Borrowing constructs from social identity theory such as social identity, salience and outgroup bias, the relation between national and party identity among militia members who took part in the conflict was investigated. It was hypothesized that while political party members who fought in the war would score high on a nationalism-patriotism scale devised for this study, the content of the nationalism would differ along political party lines. The study analysed both qualitative and quantitative research data. 105 respondents from 4 political parties participated in the study. A male member from each party was sampled for semi-structured one-hour interview. The results indicated that almost all parties scored relatively high on nationalism. While a comparison of means showed that party identity was significantly higher than nationalism–patriotism for all groups. A regression analysis was conducted to identify the predictors of party identity. Nationalism, perceiving party aim to be the protection of an ideology, viewing members of the group as coming from a similar region, entering the war to protect the land, and current party membership were all good predictors of party identity. A negative correlation was found between party identity and outgroup attitudes, yet was only significant for two groups. All outgroup attitudes were negative, yet only significant for some of the parties, supporting the initial assumptions.