Construction Jihad: state-building and development in Iran and Lebanon’s Shiʿi Territories

Eric Lob

Third World Quarterly, 2018, vol. 39, issue 11, 2103-2125

Abstract: Based on fieldwork in Iran and Lebanon, this article compares the Iranian reconstruction and development organisation Construction Jihad with its Hizbullah-affiliated subsidiary in Lebanon. Beyond shedding light on Iranian and Lebanese history and politics, this comparison offers insight into the transnational diffusion of a development organisation by a state actor to its non-state or quasi-state ‘client’ in the Muslim and developing world. Despite the distinct environmental and operational conditions of Iran and Lebanon, Construction Jihad similarly assisted a nascent Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and a fledgling Hizbullah with state-building. The latter consisted of consolidating coercive power against domestic and foreign opponents, increasing administrative capacity through service provision and post-war reconstruction, and strengthening the political and religious identity of citizens and constituents. Regardless of the differing contexts of Iran and Lebanon, Construction Jihad counter-intuitively possessed a similar organisational and developmental model in both countries that did not neatly conform to the dichotomous typologies in development studies. This seemingly contradictory model was largely faith based, exclusive, distributive and top down with certain decentralised, community driven and participatory elements.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2018.1460197 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:39:y:2018:i:11:p:2103-2125

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2018.1460197

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().