33 restructuring external public debt, and the establishment of anti-corruption and anti-money laundering procedures(Mroue 2022). In this context, the food and fuel crisis was reported by a seasoned UN official as affecting‘everyone, everywhere’(UN 2022). Labour unions, taxi and bus drivers, local town residents, youth, women, as well as ‘protesters’,‘demonstrators’ and‘activists’ were listed as having participating in the protests by ACLED data sources. Other sources noted the participation in protests of public service workers, retired army and other pensioners(Chehayeb and Mroue 2022). There appeared to be broad popular support for protests, and a generalised discontent with the economic and political governance that had allowed the collapse of the Lebanese economy and failed to protect people from the fallout. Banks that had frozen accounts in the midst of the crisis were held up at gunpoint by people desperate to pay for basic goods and health services(Safi 2022). A notable feature of the protests since 2019 has been that they cut across Lebanon ’ s historically salient divisions of religion and sect(Yee 2019), and fundamentally altered state-society relations: ‘Since October 2019, nationwide popular protests have been calling for increased accountability from the country’s political elite, which has shared executive power along sectarian lines since the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990. Unlike previous civic movements since the end of the civil war, the October protests were triggered by a severe economic downturn that continues to unfold amid a stalemate among the major political parties, which are yet to offer recovery plans to the Lebanese’(Al-Masri et al., 2020, p. 5). Political and policy response There is little room for doubt that protests against the economic crisis in Lebanon emerged directly in response to extensive corruption among the ruling elites, and to a political system in which power is distributed by religion and community(itself a legacy of the long civil war)(Gallagher 2022). The government announced a crisis committee to address the cost of living crisis, and measures to protect public sector workers from price rises (Houssari 2022b). But in the absence of a functioning government, the 2022 budget was not passed. The World Bank, which is not known for its explicit criticism of political matters, noted that: The management of the crises exemplifies the extent to which governance capacities have eroded as well as the political paralysis elite capture has brought. Political and sectarian divisions caused a near halt of high-level decision-making processes. Between October 2016 and October 2021, four governments were formed, while more than two years have been managed by caretaker governments. In May 2018, the Lebanese voted for a new Parliament for the first time in nine years after three extensions of the Parliament ’ s term. The mass protests of October 2019 then exposed long-festering governance deficits and economic decline. A government was formed in January 2020, which proposed frameworks for resolving the crises and started negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In the aftermath of the[Port of Beirut] explosion in August 2020, however, the government resigned, leaving a 13-month hiatus until a new government in September 2021 was formed. Discord among major political factions, nonetheless, continues to paralyze the government ’ s work(World Bank 2022, 2).