Ending the War? The Lebanese Broadcasting Act of 1994.

Soon after the end of the Civil War, Lebanon witnessed the birth of its first audio-visual law: the Broadcasting Act of 1994. This Act was, according to the Document of National Reconciliation that ushered in the end of the Civil War, considered to be crucial in ending civil strife in Lebanon. The 1994 Act was also the first legislation for private broadcasting to be passed in the Arab world.The introduction of the Act created great political upheaval. The present study documents the controversy created by the Act and seeks to understand the extent to which vehement criticism of the Act and of the government behind it were justified. I will seek to do so by examining the various phases of the Act: its inception as a draft; its final wording and the economic and political forces that shaped it; and its implementation, mainly through the creation of a new regulatory body, the National Audio-visual Council (or NAC) responsible for studying license applications.The present study will document the various stages of the new broadcasting law by relying almost exclusively on primary sources: i.e., archival material, most of which is inaccessible to the general public (e.g., application files); and personal interviews with high ranking government officials and media representatives. Finally, by relying on elite theory and an "evolutionary" theory of policy analysis, I will attempt to interpret the findings of the primary research, and to add to our understanding of media, law, and change in post-Civil War Lebanon.