For more than six years, Lebanon has lived through what would normally be considered an impossible experiment: a society operating with a hollowed-out state. Public institutions barely function, banks are frozen or irrelevant to daily life, courts are slow and selectively applied, and the government’s capacity to deliver even basic services is sharply constrained. Yet Lebanon has not ceased to exist. On the contrary, much of its society and economy has continued to function-often imperfectly, but sometimes surprisingly effectively-without meaningful state support. This reality forces an uncomfortable but necessary question: can Lebanon function better without a state, or at least without the kind of state it has known for decades?

At first glance, the idea seems absurd. Modern political theory treats the state as indispensable: the guarantor of law, economic stability, welfare, and national defense. But Lebanon’s experience challenges this assumption. Over the past decade, the Lebanese state has increasingly acted less as a protector of society and more as a liability. Its economic mismanagement, corruption, and capture by political factions were central causes of the financial collapse that began in 2019. The state accumulated unsustainable debt, drained public resources, and refused to acknowledge responsibility even as the banking system imploded and living standards collapsed.

What followed was not a planned withdrawal of the state but its de facto disappearance. The financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the catastrophic Beirut port explosion in 2020, and the consequences of war and regional instability were all confronted largely without state leadership. Civil society organizations, religious institutions, private companies, family networks, and the diaspora filled gaps left by a paralyzed government. This was survival by necessity, not ideology-but it revealed something important about Lebanese society’s underlying resilience.

Now, paradoxically, the state is attempting to reassert itself in ways that risk deepening the damage. Proposed financial gap laws aim to address the losses of........

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