Conclusion

Summary

This book has asked whether and why Sunni secondary cities in the Middle East have a higher propensity for unrest and ideological-political activism than capital cities. Taking Tripoli in northern Lebanon as a microcosm of the crisis of Sunnism in the broader Middle East, the book tells a story of urban violence in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Throughout the Tripoli case study, this book identified a feature of secondary cities that I call city corporatism. The root of violence in secondary cities is that these cities often see themselves as united during national turmoil, as a base for one political faction, generally the opposition.

The book identifies four causal mechanisms that jointly explain why urban violence erupts in secondary cities: external meddling; the personal ambitions of local elites; local residents’ willingness to join the fighters; and the existence of competing, or hybrid, Lebanese sovereignties. Each mechanism helps explain why Tripoli has been prone to violence in recent decades.