Political Parties and Minority Governance in Hybrid Political Orders: Reflections from Lebanon’s Palestinian Settlements and Kosovo’s Serbian Enclaves

This article analyses how minority populations govern and are governed in South Lebanon’s informal Palestinian settlements and the Serbian enclave in North Kosovo. Drawing on literature about hybrid political orders, it is argued that in both settings political parties play a linchpin role in local governance. Based on this finding, three key functions of political parties in the governance of minority populations in hybrid political orders are identified: representation, provision and brokerage. Understanding the interdependencies and trade-offs between these different roles contributes to remedying the analytical blind spot regarding the nature, positions and roles of political parties in hybrid political orders.


Introduction
In Lebanon, some 140,000 Palestinian refugees live in informal settlements that are neither recognized nor serviced by the Lebanese state. For security, welfare and representation, this minority group is largely dependent on informal brokerage and provision by Palestinian and Lebanese political parties. In North Kosovo, the governance of a minority enclave encompassing some 60,000 Kosovar Serbs is contested by the Serbian and Kosovar governments, resulting in a power struggle in which the manoeuvring of local political parties is a crucial determinant of governance outcomes. Despite their contextual disparities, three common features characterize these cases. First, the political orders in Lebanon and Kosovo are shaped by a post-war, externally brokered power-sharing arrangement; second, both countries face severe challenges in dealing with ethnic or sectarian communities; and, third, this is partially the case because these minorities are concentrated in spatially segregated enclaves or settlements. Both these manifestations of minority governance are characterized by legal ambiguity and political contestation, and take place in a context determined by multiple political authorities, plural political institutions and dynamic political structuresa situation that can be described as a 'hybrid political order'.
Drawing on these cases, this article aims to shed new light on the issue of minority governance in hybrid political orders by exploring the role of political parties in such settings. While there is an impressive academic literature on power-sharing arrangements (Binningsbø 2013;Reynolds 2002), mostly at a national level, very little is known about the main political and institutional actors involved in minority governance and the dialectics between formal and informal practices and local, national and transnational political institutions in the areas where minorities are concentrated. These processes are of the utmost importance to the prospects of stabilization and peacebuilding, as for instance demonstrated by the failure to include the Sunni minority in Iraqi statebuilding. Therefore, a better understanding of the processes that determine how minority populations govern and are governed contributes to the ability to properly appreciate the often-contentious political processes shaping the security, governance and rights of such communities. This is particularly pertinent in conflict-affected settings that can be characterized as 'fragile' or 'hybrid' because the complex and contentious nature of minority governance both affects and is affected by this hybridity. The focus of this article is thus on 'the amalgamated character of particular institutions' and 'the parallel existence of different institutions' (Balthasar 2015, 29), with the aim of exploring how minority populations in hybrid settings are governed and why governance takes the form it does. It is argued that the role of political parties in these processes is a crucial but often-overlooked aspect when it comes to generating order in hybridity.
The article proceeds with a discussion of the hybrid political order literature. The two aforementioned case studies of the governance roles of political parties among minority populations in hybrid political orders are then introduced, after which an analysis is presented that compares and furthers the cases based on the three core governance roles of political parties that are identified. This exploration should be regarded as a first effort to develop a typology that captures the different roles that political parties can play in hybrid political orders, rather than an attempt at a fully fledged theorization. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings that positions them in the broader literature.

The hybrid political order
A political order can be defined as the culmination of institutionalized power and governance relations at a given time and place (Hagmann and Hoehne 2009, 44). Boege et al. (2008), Boege, Brown, and Clements (2009) and Clements et al. (2007) coined the notion of the hybrid political order to denote those countries that do not have a sovereign authority or one single focal point of governance. In hybrid political orders, a state apparatus represented by a government may play an important role in sociopolitical life, but it is not the onlyand not necessarily the most significantactor involved in governance (Kraushaar and Lambach 2009, 14;Van Overbeek 2014, 51). This results in what Boege et al. (2008, 17) call a 'contradictory and dialectic co-existence' of governance actors in which 'diverse and competing authority structures, sets of rules, logics of order, and claims to power co-exist, overlap, and intertwine, combining elements of introduced Western models of governance and elements stemming from local indigenous traditions of governance'. Following Van der Molen and Stel (2015, 6), it is suggested that hybrid political orders have three core characteristics: multiplicity of political authorities (state and non-state); plurality of political institutions (de facto practices and de jure policies); and dynamic political structures (protracted power bases combined with volatile alliances). These different authorities, institutions and structures can substitute, complement or contest each other (Clements et al. 2007, 51-2; see also Kraushaar and Lambach 2009, 7). Boege, Brown, and Clements (2009) present the notion of the hybrid political order as a heuristic devicea concept that helps to draw attention to the simultaneity, interrelatedness and institutional overlaps of state and non-state forms of public authority that together determine how the provision of justice, security, welfare services, political representation and decision-makingin short, governancetakes shape. The main value of the idea of the hybrid political order, then, lies in the paradigm shift away from the previously dominant notion of state failure that it has helped to generate. The idea of the hybrid political order aims to 'transcend universalizing theories to include the plurality of social orders' (Lemay-Hébert and Kühn 2015, 1). As such, over the last decade, it has become increasingly prominent in analyses of governance and has helped to move these beyond normative interpretations (e.g. 'good governance') towards a more empirically grounded analysis of the provision of public goods and the construction of public authority by a variety of sociopolitical actors (Balthasar 2015). It has become one of the most influential alternatives for the 'failed state' paradigm, which only emphasizes the failing part of an envisioned political order instead of understanding the political roles of and complex interplay between a variety of state and non-state actors that are obscured by this apparent 'failing'.
The hybrid political order concept has thus been instrumental in moving scholarly debates about stateness, statebuilding and state formation beyond a focus on sovereignty. Indeed, the critique on a dichotomous approach to 'state' and 'society' is not new, drawing on studies that emphasize the intricate connections between state and society, the multiplicity of the actors involved in 'areas of limited statehood', and the 'interstices' and 'symbiosis' between various state and non-state authorities (Bierschenk and de Sardan 1997, 441;Kingston 2004, 7;Migdal 2001;Raeymaekers, Menkhaus, and Vlassenroot 2008, 8;Risse 2013;Risse and Lehmkuhl 2007;Scheye 2009, 11;Wiuff Moe 2011, 145). Thus, the hybrid political order is closely related to concepts like 'multiple sovereignty' (Wickham-Crowley 1987, 475), 'split sovereignty' (Scheafner 1998), and institutional multiplicity (Bierschenk and de Sardan 1997). It captures 'the fluidity and complexity of statebuilding' and questions 'the boundaries between categories' such as formal/informal and external/internal by adopting a holistic and historical perspective (Balthasar 2015, 28;Richards 2015, 4). Boege et al. (2008) claim to have had no intention to inform or guide statebuilding: their hybrid political order is not a policy objective, but an empirical reality (Van Overbeek 2014, 51; see also Debiel and Lambach 2009). 1 As the conclusions in the present article suggest, however, this does not mean that a 'hybrid lens' cannot help political decision-makers to acknowledge the variety and ambiguity of empirical governance realities in their policies (Lemay-Hébert and Kühn 2015).
More specifically, the hybrid political order frame can shed new light on the issue of minority governance and the role of political parties in it. It helps to move away from the assumption that the challenges inherent to minority governance (especially considering who takes responsibility for service provision and who claims prerogatives for political representation) can primarily be explained as deficiencies in state capacity, legal ingenuity and/ or policy savvy. Instead, the notion of hybridity opens up analytical space to consider how the convergence of state and non-state authorities, de facto and de jure institutions, and entrenched power bases and dynamic bargaining that characterizes the settings in which minority governance often takes place importantly shape minority governance. As is elaborated on in the concluding section of this article, moreover, empirical insights into the functions of political parties in governing minority spaces in hybrid political orders in turn augment the notion of the hybrid political order as a heuristic frame because it highlights the previously under-recognized roles that political parties can play in such orders.

Cases
Palestinian 'gatherings' in South Lebanon As Joseph (2011, 152-3) has so cynically noted, 'modern Lebanon is a poster child of a failed state'. Indeed, in the wake of the infamous Lebanese Civil War (1975-90), 'Lebanonization' has become a synonym for the destructive fragmentation of a country (Joseph 2011, 153;Migdal 2001, 136). A perverse colonial legacy, almost continuous external intervention 2 and substantial periods of occupation by Israel 3 and Syria 4 have eroded Lebanon's sovereignty externally. At the same time, the country's sectarian system has undermined sovereignty from the inside. The Lebanese state is organized through a consociational political system that centres on an inter-sectarian power-sharing formula and sectarian quota to guide the allocation of all public positions. This has resulted in an oligarchic and clientelistic distribution of state resources and positions (Atzili 2010, 761;Cammett and Issar 2010). As a consequence, the state's ability to provide welfare, security and representation to its citizens has been severely corrupted (Leenders 2012). The Lebanese state, in short, is broadly regarded as 'weak' (Atzili 2010) and its sovereignty has been described as 'highly conditional, distributed among different groups and actors along religious lines' (Ramadan 2008, 666). Overall, then, Lebanon clearly exhibits the potency of non-state as well as state governance authorities, the respective influence of informal as well as formal governance institutions and the interplay of protracted sectarianism with volatile political alliances that define a hybrid political order.
In this hybridity, the role of political parties is crucial. In Lebanon's sectarian state structure, political parties are the main vehicle of the patronage-based governance networks that 'divide the pie' of state resources (El Khazen 2003). As such, they have become 'the citizen's main administrative representative within the Lebanese state' (Vloeberghs 2012, 246). Lebanese political parties are thus much more than the parliamentary (or governmental) political representatives of their constituents. Embodying both cause and effect of the 'cantonization' of Lebanon during the war (Hirst 2010, 207), they are the institutional front office of much broader territorial and institutional sectarian strongholds that each have their own religious and welfare institutions, international alliances and armed militias (Cammett and Issar 2010;Harik 1994;Picard 2012). Fregonese's (2012, 659) conception of Lebanon as 'a constellation of hybrid sovereignties' highlights the crucial positions that political parties hold in Lebanon's hybrid political order. Fregonese identifies Lebanon's political parties as the main institutional instrument for facilitating the 'tight circular connections between state and nonstate actors' (Fregonese 2012, 657). With regard to Hezbollah, for instance, Fregonese notes that it is 'simultaneously a political party, … an armed resistance movement, a provider of social services, and a provider of infrastructure: it is simultaneously part of the state, nonstate, and state-like' (668-9). 5 In Lebanon, no sectarian community holds an absolute majority and each group can thus be considered a minority. Some groupsespecially those without Lebanese citizenship, howeverare more marginalized than others, and their governance is especially sensitive in the context of Lebanon's hybrid political order. This particularly applies to the approximately 400,000 Palestinians that constitute roughly 10% of Lebanon's population. 6 The Palestinians are Lebanon's most disenfranchised community: citizenship is withheld from them, they are legally discriminated against in the labour market, and they cannot own real estate (Suleiman 2006). The provision of security, welfare and representation to Lebanon's Palestinians is considered problematic by many Lebanese for two main reasons. First, the Palestinian community is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and their 'integration' (or tawteen in Arabic) into the Lebanese system is widely seen as a threat to the country's precarious sectarian balance. Apart from the principled adherence to the Palestinians' 'right to return', this is one of the reasons why the Lebanese government has categorically refused to take responsibility for the Palestinians that fled to Lebanon during the 1948 Nakba 7 and their descendants: any form of legal, political or institutional recognition or accommodation is seen as a prelude to the dreaded integration that might once again destabilize Lebanon (Czajka 2012;Haddad 2003;Meier 2010). Second, the majority of Lebanon's Palestinian refugees live in refugee camps where the Lebanese state, since it has ceded much of its sovereignty through the Cairo Agreement, 8 has neither a physical nor a legal presence. In Lebanon, the Palestinian camps are popularly regarded as 'states-within-the-state' and 'security islands'physical manifestations of the Palestinians' 'anti-state' that was responsible for the breakdown of the Lebanese state throughout the civil war (Czajka 2012).
The Lebanese state thus has never been able and willing to provide welfare, security and representation to the Palestinians that reside in its territory (Stel 2017a). Instead, the Palestinian camps are governed by a combination of other organizations. A host of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) offers social and utility services among Palestinian communities. The United Nations Works and Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) also provides education, healthcare, electricity, waste management and infrastructural services in the camps. Most important to the governance of the camps, however, are the Palestinian political partiesthose affiliated with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), predominantly Fatah, and those organized under the opposing Tahaluf alliance, most prominently Hamas. Throughout the 1970s, the PLO even operated a de facto state-within-the-state in Lebanon (Stel 2017b). Rubenberg (1983, 78) writes: 'The PLO has clearly played a crucial role in providing Palestinians [in Lebanon] with comprehensive medical and health services, an economic infrastructure, cultural expression, development, education, social welfare services, and other programmes along the lines of any sovereign territorial state'. Currently, Palestinian parties in Lebanon still have their own militias (Long and Hanafi 2010). They also have political offices which coordinate with the Lebanese state and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Palestinian occupied territories. The main parties, furthermore, have installed municipality-like civil committees in the camps, in the form of the PLO's popular committees and Hamas' family committees. These committees, which are not officially recognized by the Lebanese state, are responsible for the day-to-day oversight of service delivery (as well as the related tax collection), conflict mediation, administration and coordination with NGOs, the UNRWA and Lebanese state agencies (such as municipalities, utility companies, mukhtars 9 and provincial and district governors; see . In addition to these Palestinian partiesand despite the Lebanese state's disengagement from the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon -Lebanese political parties also play a crucial role in the governance of some Palestinian communities, namely those residing in the 'gatherings', informal camps that are neither recognized by the Lebanese government nor fully serviced by the UNRWA. 10 There are some 39 gatherings in Lebanon, most of them concentrated in the south (Chabaan 2014). In the gatherings, as well as in many of the camps, Lebanese politicians at times offer direct financial support for specific development projects, such as the asphalting of roads or the restoration of mosques. In other instances, Lebanese politicians provide the 'social capital' or 'institutional brokerage' (wasta in Arabic) needed to realize such projects, ranging from the installation of electricity transformers to the facilitation of illegal construction. Most importantly, however, Lebanese politiciansoften MPsand their local representatives frequently function as intermediaries between Palestinian parties and their governance committees on the one hand and the Lebanese state on the other.
The Lebanese state does not formally recognize the Palestinian committees as representatives of the residents of the gatherings and camps. Yet, in the gatheringswhich fall outside the UNRWA mandate, are exempted from the Cairo Agreement and are mostly located illegally on privately or publicly owned Lebanese landthe committees are nevertheless dependent on state institutions for many things (such as granting permission for construction, coordinating infrastructural services and authorizing events; see Stel 2015). As described above, Lebanon's political parties operate a vast institutional network outside the framework of the formal state. This makes them particularly well suited to function as a broker between the Palestinian communities and their representatives on the one hand and the Lebanese state on the other. Regarding Lebanese-Palestinian relations in the Shabriha gathering, respondents to a prior study explained: if the PC [Popular Committee] needs something, it contacts the local PLO/Fatah representative. This representative would then decide to either (horizontally) contact the relevant Lebanese political representative in Sour [Tyre] or (vertically) pass the request on to his superiors in Beirut who would then address their relative Lebanese counterparts. The Lebanese political representative in question would subsequently contact his 'people within the state institutions', whether ministers, mayors or employees, to get the job done. (Stel 2015, 81) In fact, both Hezbollah and Amalthe two dominant parties in South Lebanon, where the majority of Palestinian gatherings are locatedhave liaison committees or officers to strengthen their ties with Palestinian groups (Czajka 2012, 239;Khalili 2007, 290;Knudsen 2011, 98). A representative and former Hizballah MP found that his party operated as 'the channel between the Palestinians and the state'. 11 The 'Palestinian liaison' for Amal in south Lebanon similarly explained how his party employs its 'presence in the government' to facilitate communication between Palestinian parties and state institutions. 12 In Lebanon's Palestinian gatherings, then, Lebanese and Palestinian political partiesrather than government agenciesare the main governance actors. Competing Palestinian parties present themselves as the representatives of the refugee communities in the gatherings. Much as Palestinian parties are the broker between Palestinian residents and any organization from outside the gatherings, Lebanese parties have positioned themselves between Palestinian parties (and their civic committees) in the gatherings and the Lebanese state. While they sometimes provide concrete financial or material aid to the Palestinians (often via the committees of Palestinian parties), their governance role is predominantly characterized as 'facilitation': they mediate between the popular committees and the Lebanese electricity company responsible for maintenance in the gatherings; they pressure the municipal recycling factory to accept 'Palestinian waste'; and they help the committees get in touch with ministerial departments when there are threats of eviction (Stel 2015). In the Palestinian gatherings, Lebanese political parties crucially bridge the state and the non-state. They have some philanthropic and ideological reasons to fulfil this role which are based on a pan-Arab or pan-Islamic solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians. In addition, they may aim to win the votes from a small minority of naturalized Palestinians or secure the support of Palestinian armed groups in their intra-Lebanese strife (Khalili 2007). Most importantly, however, their indispensable role in minority governance is enabled by the crucial function that Lebanese political parties fulfil in bridging state and non-state authorities and formal and informal institutions, and navigating the interplay between long-term governance systems and short-term political ruptures. By managing the sensitive issue of minority governance in this way, in turn, political parties guarantee their de facto positions as power brokers in Lebanon's broader hybrid political order.

North Kosovo's Serbian enclave
Kosovo's minority governance arrangements after 1999 should be understood in relation to the ongoing contestations between Albanian and Serb elites over the status of Kosovo. These contestations have deep historical roots, but took a new turn when President Slobodan Milošević abrogated Kosovo's autonomous status and self-government in 1989, installing a Serbian government in Kosovo. The League for a Democratic Kosovo (LDK) reacted with a strategy of non-violent resistance, declaring Kosovo 'independent' and forming a parallel government (partly in exile) that provided services (especially education) and collected taxes (Pula 2004). The Serbian sovereignty and administration of Kosovo were suspended after the international bombing campaign on Serbia in 1999. An international administration, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), became formally responsible for Kosovo's government, helping to prepare the province for 'self-government' and looking for a 'political solution' to the status issue (United Nations Security Council. 1999. Resolution 1244Chesterman 2004). However, the latter proved extremely difficult and an agreement between Kosovo's Albanian parties and Belgrade in relation to Kosovo's status was never reached.
Based on the 'Ahtisaari plan', 13 the UN subsequently proposed that Kosovo be independent, but with a strong, institutionalized protection of the rights of the Serbian minority. Indeed, many points from the Ahtisaari plansuch as high levels of autonomy for Serbian majority municipalities and the right to maintain relations with Belgradewere integrated into Kosovo's new constitution, which formed the basis of its declaration of independence in February 2008. Kosovo is now a parliamentary democracy with a number of guarantees for its minorities. While Serbs and other minorities consist of some 5% of the population, 20 of the 120 seats in parliament are reserved for minority groups (10 for Serbs and 10 for other minorities). Moreover, changes in the constitution require a two-thirds majority of the minority vote, giving the Serb minority substantive powers in Kosovo. Serbs also hold special governance prerogatives at the local level, such as the right of Serb majority municipalities to form a network of municipalities and maintain contacts with Belgrade (Koeth 2010).
In the years of the international administration of Kosovo and also after Kosovo's declaration of independence, consecutive Serbian governments manifested an incessant willingness to fund parallel institutions and job opportunities for Serbs in Kosovo, including healthcare, education, and courts (OSCE 2007, 5). For the Serbs in Kosovo, the continued involvement of Belgrade was not only of symbolic importance but also formed a practical lifeline, offering services, jobs and other benefits (BPRG 2013, 1). Over the past 15 years, subsequent governments in Belgrade have continued to fund services, social benefits, jobs and political institutions in Kosovo (ICG 2011;OSCE 2007;Prelec and Rashiti 2015). The relationships between these parallel institutions and the Kosovar governments have varied over time. In general, political leaders in the northern part of Kosovoa territory bordering Serbia that is almost entirely inhabited by Serbs-have kept their distance from Kosovo's capital, Pristina, while maintaining close relations with the consecutive governments in Serbia. In the central and southern parts of Kosovo, where Serbs live in scattered enclaves, the relationships with the Kosovar government have generally been more pragmatic.
This article focuses on the situation of the Serbian minority in the norththe part of Kosovo that has been a key concern in the process of international intervention and statebuilding in Kosovo. Despite its apparent difference from the Lebanese situation described above, North Kosovo can be considered a hybrid political order in its own right. It displays a wide variety of political authorities involved in governance that are tied to different actors whose 'state' or 'non-state' character is contested. Torn between Kosovar and Serbian authorities, a broad range of political institutionssome formal and others informalhave emerged in this area. These various authorities and institutions, moreover, are confronted with a complex interaction between historically protracted governance networks and identity politics on the one hand and extremely volatile electoral dynamics on the other.
North Kosovo consists of approximately 10% of Kosovo's territory and it is estimated that it has between 55,000 and 65,000 inhabitants, the great majority of which are Kosovo Serb (ICG 2011, 1). Over the past 17 years, the governance arrangements in the north have been in flux and the Serbian government and political parties have played various roles in these arrangements, as well as in the strategies being employed to change them. While the international community advocated the integration of the north into the Kosovar state, it was not until April 2013 that a dialogue between Serbia and Kosovofacilitated by the European Union (EU)led to a new agreement about the governance of the north (Van der Borgh, Le Roy, and Zweerink 2016).
Almost immediately after the instalment of the international administration in Kosovo in 1999, the government in Belgrade started to develop policies in support of Serbs in Kosovo. Depending on the composition of the government and the party that had most influence in it, governments sought to use these funds strategically to either frustrate or endorse Kosovo Serb cooperation with Pristina and participation in Kosovar elections (both local and 'national'). However, the success of these strategies depended almost entirely on the support of leaders of local Serbian parties in Kosovo and the degree of consensus that could be reached with these parties about the political strategy vis-à-vis Pristina.
It is important to note that while virtually all Serbian political parties argue that 'Kosovo is Serbia', their positions with regard to cooperation with Pristina differ (Van der Borgh 2012). More radical nationalist parties, such as the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), generally reject any political solution outside Kosovo's inclusion in the Serbian state. More moderate parties, like the Democratic Party (DS), have been willing to consider relatively pragmatic solutions. They recognize Kosovo's right to govern the entire territory of Kosovo as long as special political arrangements for Serb majority areas are guaranteed. This underlines how perceptions of the new 'host' state can become crucial objects of struggle within the national minority itself (Brubaker 1995, 115).
Three periods of minority governance in the north can be distinguished, with political parties playing different roles in each phase. The first period of minority governance runs from 1999 to 2003. In the years after the bombing campaign, Serbia had to withdraw from Kosovo and UNMIK became the de facto government. North Kosovo, already a Serbian majority area, became a kind of safe haven for Kosovo Serbs that had left Pristina and other areas in Kosovo. In these first years, the Milošević government in Belgrade started to fund services such as education and healthcare in this part of Kosovo, as well as supporting local defence groups (ICG 2011;OSCE 2007;Van der Borgh 2012). After the fall of the Milošević regime a more moderate government took office and increased the funding for Serbian institutions in Kosovo. This new government, however, was also willing to cooperate with UNMIK and in 2001 a deal was struck: UNMIK endorsed the opening of a Serbian agency Coordinating Centre for Kosovo and Metohija (CKK) in Kosovo to administer Serbian-funded services in Kosovo, while Belgrade agreed to Kosovo Serbian participation in the first elections of Kosovo in November 2001 (Van der Borgh 2012, 37). After the elections, the Kosovo Serbian party Coalition Return (Povratak) joined the Kosovar government, and power-sharing seemed to work even in the face of the unresolved status question. Thus, after a rocky start, as of 2001 the political parties seemed to be willing and able to play a representative role in line with the power-sharing formula that UNMIK had promoted. However, this 'cooperative' policy was objected to by radical Kosovo Serbian political leaders (many of them members of the DSS), who called for a boycott of the elections and criticized any participation in the Kosovar parliament and government.
The second period, running from 2003 to 2013, witnessed political leaders in the north resisting cooperation with the government in Pristina while strategically using the increasing support from Belgrade. This period started with the electoral victory of the DSS in Belgrade in December 2003 and the growing influence of the DSS in Serbian policy vis-à-vis Kosovo (ICG 2011, 3). The DSS rejected the participation of Kosovo Serbs in Kosovar institutions, and Serbian funding to North Kosovo increased; by 2011, this funding was estimated to consist of €200 to €300 million per year (ICG 2011, 4). Such Serbian funding was part of a strategy to defy Kosovar presence in the north (ICG 2009, 18). The DSS played a key role in the distribution of these funds and replaced most of the staff of the CKK agency with people that sympathized with the DSS. As a result, the positions of local leaders that had ties with the DSS became stronger. The Helsinki Committee (2008,9) even wrote of a 'partocracy' to signal the extent to which the party had become a determining factor in the social life of Kosovo Serbs. The Serbian state was the main provider of employment, and the DSS controlled the networks to distribute jobs. In the absence of a Serbian state presence in the north, the region was often portrayed as a lawless area, governed by a local political class that counted on high-level political support from Belgrade.
After the Kosovar declaration of independence, the Serbian government continued the financial flow to Kosovo. In addition, it initiated the practice of supporting local Serbs by organizing municipal elections in Serb-majority areas in May 2008 (BPRG 2013, 1). In North Kosovo, where resistance against cooperation with Pristina remained very strong, these municipal elections strengthened the position of local politicians that were against any interference of Pristina and the international community (Prelec and Rashiti 2015, 12). The relations between Belgrade and local politicians were not always smooth, however; when the more moderate DS party won Serbian elections in May 2008, this affected the position of the DSS in North Kosovo (ICG 2011, 3-4). However, local political leaders there had a relatively high degree of autonomy from Belgrade, and a group of four majors formed a type of 'de facto' leadership in the north, which operated relatively independent from Belgrade (Prelec and Rashiti 2015). Due to their close contact with other organizations (including informal economic ones), these leaders were able to maintain a degree of order in a territory where there was no formal rule of law (Prelec and Rashiti 2015, 6). Their authority was based on the ongoing financial flows from Belgrade, as well as the fact that they 'took the lead in organizing resistance to Pristina's attempts to assert authority' (Prelec and Rashiti 2015, 6). Thusbased on financial support from Belgrade, a strong anti-Pristina stance, and local support networksthese leaders played the role of de facto authorities. It is fair to say that, in the absence of a Serbian state presence, the 'partocracy' was by then still alive and kicking, with these leaders and their political parties playing important links between Serbian funding schemes and local job opportunities in schools, hospitals, and municipalities.
The third period of minority governance in North Kosovo was initiated by the Brussels Agreement that was brokered by the EU and signed in April 2013. In this agreement the Serbian and Kosovar governments decided to work towards a 'normalization' of the relations between the two states, which affected the position of political leaders in the north. While the status issue was not on the table during the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, the EU expected that Belgrade would agree to bring North Kosovo under Kosovar jurisdiction. The Serbian majority municipalities would, however, form an association and community that would have 'a full overview in the areas of economic planning, education, health, urban and rural planning' (Prelect and Rashiti 2015, 31). Although the form that this entity would take was not entirely clear yet, the leaders in the north resisted the deal that had been brokered by Belgrade, even as Belgrade declared that it would stick to the agreement. On 14-15 February 2012, political leaders in North Kosovo had already organized a referendum which made clear that the great majority of the population in the north rejected the institutions of 'the so-called Republic of Kosovo' (BPRG 2013, 2). However, the Serbian government made a deal with the government of Kosovo about the governance of the north and agreed to the organization of municipal elections under Kosovar law that took place in November 2013. This decision was vehemently opposed by the political parties in the north who called for the elections to be boycotted.
Despite this strong local opposition, Belgrade-based officials 'openly campaigned' for the political party Srpska List, arguing that this was in the national (Serbian) interest (Prelec and Rashiti 2015). The idea of the Serbian government was clearly to reconcile the objectives and make a deal with Kosovo (a requirement for EU accession) with a continued presence in Kosovo. The head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija who supported the process stated, for instance, that 'these are not ordinary elections but rather elections in which the vote is about whether we will guarantee that the Serbian state can continue to function on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija' (BPRG 2013, 2). Serbian officials therefore looked for people willing to stand for election in the northnot an easy task in an area where most politicians opposed these elections in the first placeand threatened that they would refuse to fund anyone opposing 'Srpska list' (BPRG 2013, 3-4). Thus, in the name of 'Serbian control' over North Kosovo, the government in Belgrade sought to break the power and control of the political establishment in the north that had governed the area in open opposition to Pristina. In order to make this strategy work, it needed a 'new' political party (Sprska List) that was more willing to balance its allegiance to Belgradewhich remained a symbolic and practical reference for local residents and politicians alikewith acceptance of Kosovar jurisdiction.
These dynamics illustrate that the political parties active in North Kosovo are essential actors when it comes to managing minority governance in the context of a hybrid political order. They have emerged as the actors which are most capable of engaging with various types of political authority (whose stateness is contested and contextual), filling the gaps between formal and informal governance institutions, and engineering shifts in de facto governance realities against a backdrop of electoral precariousness.

Analysis
Despite the many differences between South Lebanon's Palestinian gatherings and North Kosovo's Serbian enclaves, a significant similarity between these cases is the substantial role of political parties in local governance arrangements. The significance of political parties in postwar settings as such is not surprising. The literature elaborately discusses the importance of political parties in managing transitions from 'war' to 'politics' and navigating volatile identity politics in times of reinvigorated electoral cycles (Lyons 2005;Reilly 2013). Scholars working on political change and democratization have also extensively demonstrated the importance of political parties to governance and the related challenges of assuming the role that many parties in 'young democracies' face (Burnell and Gerrits 2013;Ezrow 2011;Smith 2013). Carothers (2006) called political parties the weakest link in democratization processes, noting they are often lacking legitimacy, accused of corruption and incompetence, led by small elites and mostly active during periods of elections.
In Lebanon, political parties are indeed often analysed in terms of their parliamentary activities; in many cases this is related to their role in Lebanon's sectarian system and they are considered as clientelist and communalrather than strictly politicalrepresentatives (Barak 2002, 628). In this regard, political parties are seen as predominantly personalistic vehicles of political elites that are intricately tied to Lebanon's private sector (Stel and Naudé 2016). The role of Lebanese political parties in the provision of public goods is also recognized by scholars working on Lebanon's political economy (Cammett and Issar 2010), but this is mostly discussed as a (problematic) legacy of parties that have been militias in the past (El Khazen 2013;Harik 1994). Palestinian parties are structurally referred to as 'factions' that no longer have a popular base or an effective governance capacity and are mostly concerned with petty rivalries and infighting (Allan 2014).
The political parties in Kosovo and Serbia are generally analysed in terms of their parliamentary and political activities as well. An important topic in the discussions on the political parties that emerged in Kosovo after the UN took over governance in 1999 is these parties' links to former movements (either armed or non-violent) and their willingness and capacity to transform into political parties and overcome (internal) divisions (Van der Borgh 2012). In addition, the rise of a new political party -Vetevendosjathat rejects the international presence in Kosovo has received ample attention (Yabanci 2015). Some studies mention the relationships of a number of Kosovar political parties with clan structures, as well as the concerns about the linkages between political parties and criminal groups (Kaltcheva 2008). However, Serbs in North Kosovo have often looked at and joined Serbian (or Serbian-based) political parties. While the positioning of these parties in the Serbian and Kosovar political landscapes has been mentioned, only limited attention has been paid to the roles of these Serbian parties in the governance arrangements in North Kosovo.
The nature and role of the political parties described above clearly go beyond these current conceptions of political parties in the Lebanese and Kosovar contexts. Simply reiterating the importance of the parliamentary role of political parties in post-conflict settings disregards the much broader governance roles that they take on in the hybrid political orders that post-conflict settings often constitute. When it comes to minority governance in hybrid political orders, a distinction is therefore made between three roles. First, the 'traditional' role of electoral political representation that is often highlighted in discussions about political parties is indeed evident. Second, in the instances of minority governance in the hybrid settings studied in this article, the political parties play a more practical governance role in the sense of providing public goods, ranging from welfare and infrastructure services to the implementation of order and justice. This, too, is a function of political parties that regularly surfaces in the existing literaturealbeit often in a more negative sense as being part of patronage networks, or as extensions of militia or organized-crime tendencies. Thirdly, in addition to these electoral and governance functions, the political parties in the present case studies perform a more elusive and mostly unacknowledged governance role. This regards the diverse practices of brokering the institutional networking and administrative linking that provide the connections between different local, national and transnational levels of governance and between state and non-state institutions. Each of these three roles representing, providing and brokeringare elaborated on below.
In terms of representing, the political parties explored in the present case studies perform a perhaps rather conventional function. In Lebanon's Palestinian gatherings, despite people's frustration with widespread corruption and incapacity, the Palestinian parties are the major vehicles for political representation, offering religious, political and nationalist repertoires that generally resonate at least partly with people's self-identification. Importantly, however, such representation is not electoral, as Palestinian refugees do not vote for their representatives and parties, instead drawing on membership and people's self-proclaimed affiliation with them. Perhaps more striking is the involvement of Lebanese political parties in Palestinian gatherings; although the presence of these Lebanese parties is partly electorally drivenaimed at gaining the votes of small pockets of 'nationalized' Palestinianssuch electoral relations are limited and pragmatic in nature, and Lebanese political parties do not have solid political (as in ideological or identity-driven) ties with their Palestinian constituents.
Political parties have also played a conventional role in North Kosovo. However, that role has been hampered by the question of whether parties work under the Kosovar or the Serbian systema question that has often divided moderate and radical political parties. Over the past 17 years, Serbian representatives of political parties in North Kosovo have generally been reluctant to participate in Kosovar elections. When Kosovo declared itself independent in 2008, Serbia organized municipal elections in North Kosovo that were not recognized by the government in Pristina, which strengthened the power of the local political elites who rejected Kosovo's sovereignty. It was not until the signing of the Brussels Agreement in April 2013 that, for first the time after Kosovo's independence, elections were held throughout the whole of Kosovo, including the north. Indeed, as was the case in 2001, only the more moderate Serbian political parties participated, while the nationalist Serbian parties in the north decided to boycott the proceedings. 14 Moreover, while the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has reported that these elections were free and fair, there are also reports of serious issues in the electoral process in the north, including inaccurate voter registration and voter intimidation (Prelec 2014). The elections had to be rescheduled and a new round of voting took place (Ernst 2014). Voter turnout, however, remained low in this part of Kosovo (approximately 20%; see Ernst 2014). Thus, the disagreement about the status of Kosovo, and in particular about the government arrangements for North Kosovo, has deeply affected the electoral role of political parties. The nationalist parties in the north that seem to count on a high level of support are not willing to work under the Kosovar jurisdiction, and continue to resist political arrangements that fall under Kosovar jurisdiction. This has greatly hampered the electoral process and the capacity of political parties to compete for the vote in this part of Kosovo.
Apart from political representation, in the case of Lebanon political parties have been actively involved in the practical provision of public goods. While, as shown above, this function is recognized in the literature, what is striking is that political parties in Lebanon function as the main governance providers. Rather than merely operating as a formal parliamentary representative, political parties in South Lebanon's Palestinian settlements are central in providing utility and welfare services and organizing security arrangements. In Palestinian gatherings, neither the PA nor the Lebanese state has a leading position in service provision. Palestinian political parties have installed municipality-like structures to directly cater for some services (such as water provision, infrastructure maintenance and administrative regulation) and function as a counterpart to the providers of other services (electricity, sewage and waste management, healthcare and education). Lebanese political parties also play a facilitating role, sometimes in terms of network and sometimes in terms of finances, in such service provision.
In the case of North Kosovo, political parties had not directly provided servicesbut since the Serbian government was not allowed to formally extend to Kosovo, the facilitation of Serbian and Kosovo Serbian political parties in the north was quite important. The fact that Serbian funding is crucial to economic and social life in the north, and that it is largely spent on salaries and other benefits (including pensions), implies that the use and control of these funds is crucial (ICG 2011, 5). The political party in Serbia that dominated the Kosovo policy generally dominated administration of the northern governance arrangements, such as staff appointments at the linking agencies and the provision of job opportunities. But Serbian political parties had to deal with a relatively strong local leadership. Between 2004 and 2008 the influence of a group of leaders in the north that were linked to the DSS and based their power position on the control of certain public institutions increased (Van der Borgh 2012, 38). One of the key leaders, for example, was the director of the hospital in northern Mitrovica, which had a budget of €16.5 million and 1600 employees (ICG 2011, 5). In the absence of effective rule of law (either from Serbia or Kosovo) this leadership built up its own power position in the north. After 2008, the more moderate DS government in Belgrade cut much of the leadership's access to Serbian funds, which weakened its position (ICG 2011, 4). However, these leadersand the political elites in the north more generallyretained a considerable degree of autonomy, a position they could only maintain on the basis of funding from Belgrade.
In both cases, political parties play these dual representation and provision roles because governance through state institutions is contested and the political order is hybridbut there are significant differences across these two case studies. In Lebanon, state institutions cannot or will not cater to Palestinian communities because they barely have the capacity to provide for their Lebanese constituencies and because leniency towards the Palestinian refugees is understood as a prelude to permanent settlement, a scenario that constitutes a political taboo. In contrast to formal state institutions, political partieswhich are formally related to state institutions through their elected representatives but also have a separate administrative structure that can implement servicesseem particularly well placed to provide services in minority spaces. They can bridge the de jure structures of the state and the de facto governance realities among minority populations that are ignored or underserved by formal state policies and agencies. As such, political parties are the hub in hybrid orders constituted by the complex interconnections between diverse actorsranging from state agencies to civil society organizations and NGOs to clans, militias and criminalsthat add up to governance in minority enclaves. In North Kosovo, local political parties have also built up a strong position, but their connection with the government in Serbiawhich wants, but according to UNSC Resolution 1244 is not allowed, to govern North Kosovois crucial. Indeed, where the Lebanese governance arrangements emerge in spite of the neglect of the Lebanese state, the governance structures in North Kosovo should be seen as opposing the very presence of Kosovar institutions and the related claim to govern that part of Kosovo.
This leads to the third role of political parties in the governance of minority populations in hybrid political orders identified above: brokering, which in this context refers to processes of both facilitation and contestation. In the case of Lebanon, political parties have generally played a connecting role by linking different levels of governanceranging from the local to the national and transnationaland different types of governance, such as formal state governance and informal governance by civil or armed nonstate actors. Lebanon's Palestinian gatherings are legally ambiguous spaces inhabited by a minority whose presence in Lebanon is politically contested. These informal refugee camps arguably constitute the most hybrid (ambiguous, contested and pluralist) aspect of an already hybrid political order. Political parties provide an institutional anchor in this setting. They have local, national and transnational manifestations: Palestinian parties have local governance bodies within the gatherings, national representatives in Lebanon's capital and close relations with the PA in the Palestinian territories. Political parties also have statist and non-statist tiers: the Lebanese parties active in the Palestinian gatherings have a formal representation in all layers of the state apparatus, as well as a social wing that is independent from this statist representation. Combined, this allows for a chain of brokerage (residents of the gatherings rely on Palestinian parties, which in turn depend on Lebanese parties for access to state resources and institutions) that importantly determines the institutional logic of these hybrid minority spaces. Thus, in this complex governance setting in which many actors are involved, political parties can provide the overarching structure to connect and facilitate such a patchwork of services.
In the case of Kosovo, while members of political parties also have a connecting or linking function, the Serbian governmentas the main funder of the governance arrangementsnevertheless plays a strong role and, contrary to the case of Lebanon, has been willing to play such a role. What is more, over the past 17 years Serbian funding has been proof of the firm belief that North Kosovo should be governed by Serbian institutions, which have actively challenged the claims of the Kosovar government to govern Kosovo. However, the Serbian governance funds have served different political strategies, and political parties have been key entities in the debates and contestations about the strategic use of these funds. The view of radical parties, like the DSS, has always been that these governance arrangements simply replace the Kosovar state, while preferring that North Kosovo becomes part of Serbia. This view has found strong resonance in North Kosovo (BPRG 2013, 1;ICG 2013, 11). In 2012, local political leaders in the north organized (without the consent of Belgrade) a referendum about the north's future governance, the outcome of which was a rejection of 'the so-called Kosovar institutions'. However, pressured by the EU, the Serbian government signed the Brussels Agreement and accepted the integration of Serbian governance arrangements in North Kosovo under Kosovar jurisdiction. In the elections of November 2013, the Serbian government supported new local political parties that were willing to participate in Kosovar elections, but most of the existing political parties still refused to participate.
While the three roles of the parties are present in both cases, there are of course evident context-specific differences between their minority governance. Whereas in Lebanon minority governance is characterized by long-term deadlock, in Kosovo the arrangements are still in flux. Moreover, whereas in Lebanon neither the Palestinian nor Lebanese state has the aspirations to govern the Palestinian gatherings in Lebanon, in North Kosovo the Serbian and Kosovar state apparatuses are actively vying to govern. In these different contexts, political parties have different histories and practices, and play different roles in the governance arrangements that have come into existence. Whereas Palestinian political parties are directly involved in the provision of services, using both 'private' and public funds, the Serbian political parties are indirectly involved, functioning as chains in the canalization of Serbian funds in Kosovo. There are also important differences in the forms of brokering. In both cases, political parties play a facilitating role and are involved in the more hidden institutional networking and administrative linking that provides the connections between different local, national and transnational levels of governance and between state and non-state institutions. Brokering is thus not necessarily a smooth or even successful process. This becomes particularly clear in the case of North Kosovo, where different political parties contest the use and function of Serbian government funding, leading to clashes and conflicts between different actors at different levels.
Concluding remarks: Political parties, minority governance and hybrid political orders The explorative analysis of these two cases of minority governance in hybrid political orders proposes that political parties play a key role in these dynamics through three broad functions: representation, provision and brokerage. While the representative and provision roles of political parties in hybrid political orders are acknowledged by other scholars as well, the practice of institutional brokerage has been recognized as significant in navigating hybridity but is yet to be attributed to political parties that operate in such contexts. The demonstration presented in this article that political parties play a variety of rolesincluding provision and brokeragerather than only the narrow function of formal political representation can thus be a vantage point for further refining and specifying how governance in hybrid political orders is understood. Although the focus here is on the mechanisms of representation, service provisioning and brokerage with regard to minority governance specificallywhere governance is even more complex due to the often problematic relation between the minority and the statethese roles can be expected to be relevant with regard to political parties representing majority groups in hybrid political orders as well, considering that these face similarly diverse political authorities, institutions and systems.
In the existing literature, either the mediating role of political parties is recognized but not linked to hybridity or the significance of brokerage in hybrid settings is acknowledged but the practice is not attributed to political parties. Where political parties are conceptualized as brokering agentsas in Berenschot's (2010) notion of 'everyday mediation', which shows how Indian politicians and their parties are simultaneously part of the local state bureaucracy and constitute an independent gatekeeper to these state institutionssuch conceptualizations are not linked to a context of hybridity as operationalized in this article. At the same time, the importance of institutional brokering or bridging in hybrid settings is acknowledged as well, but without attribution to political parties. Leading concepts in the hybrid political order literature embrace the idea of brokerage and mediation. Menkhaus (2007Menkhaus ( , 78, 2008 developed the notion of a mediated state in which the mediating, or brokering, role of 'whatever local nonstate authorities [state representatives] can find' is central. These mediating authorities, such as 'coalitions of business groups, traditional authorities and civic groups' in Somalia and 'a collection of local nonstate actors led by a women's market group' in Kenya (Menkhaus 2007, 74), however, do not seem to include political partieseven if the significance of the 'arrival of multi-party politics and competition over MP constituencies' for governance dynamics in hybrid settings is acknowledged (Menkhaus 2008, 25). In his more generic discussions of the mediated state that go beyond the specific empirical contexts of Somalia and Kenya, Menkhaus (2006, 6) points to a 'diverse range of local authorities' involved in mediation that does not include political parties either. Hagmann and Péclard's (2010, 549) concept of negotiating statehood also revolves around negotiations, bricolage and 'fluid frontiers' and as such puts a premium on brokerage and linking, showing that the actors with which or through whom state institutions are seen to negotiate and contest public authority are diverse. In their extensive inventory of such actorswhich ranges from 'customary authorities, professional associations, trade unions, neighbourhood and self-help organizations, social movements, national and international NGOs, churches and religious movements' to 'guerrillas, warlords and "big men", businessmen, multinational corporations, regional and international (government) institutions and foreign states'they include political parties but do not single them out or explore their brokering potential vis-à-vis these other social groups (Hagmann and Péclard 2010, 546-7).
Further investigation of the role of political parties in hybrid governance may thus contribute to establishing the value of the hybrid political order concept in understanding 'trends of state-making and state-breaking' (Balthasar 2015, 27). In hybrid orders, political parties are arguably not simply parliamentary actors but comprehensive governance actors. Shaped by a history of violent conflict, these political parties have often followed a trajectory from militias to parties that cater not only to a political constituency but also a sectarian or ethnic one. The combined functions of representation, provision and brokerage that such post-war parties in hybrid settings in Kosovo and Lebanon now take on illustrate how political parties are simultaneously the cause and effect of a situation of contested or paralyzed national governance. In fulfilling these comprehensive governance roles, political parties may substitute, complement or contest other authorities, institutions and systems that make up a hybrid political order Clements et al. (2007, 51-2). Building on the practice of mediation or brokerage that is evident in the two cases examined in the present, however, the importance of a fourth aspect needs to be highlighted: accommodation and integration (as identified by Kraushaar and Lambach 2009, 7; see also Helmke and Levitsky 2004, 728). In connecting the different political authorities, institutions and structures that characterize hybrid political orders, political parties may contribute to the coherence, and thereby resilience, of a hybrid order.
Revealing the comprehensive functions of political parties in hybrid governance should serve as a reminder that statebuilding 'is more than institution building' and that 'analytical examinations of statebuilding must go beyond the technocratic' (Richards 2015, 5). By exploring political parties as a potential hub among multiple actors, institutions and systems, the present analysis adds substance to the claim inherent to the concept of the hybrid political order that relations between the local and the international, the modern and the traditional, and the internal and the external are fluid rather than binary; rather than 'vaguely referring to social orders simply cohabiting and exchanging', the crucial role of political parties in enabling such cohabitation and exchange can now be concretely explored (Lemay-Hébert and Kühn 2015, 2). This matters in a practical sense too, because it offers new insights to decision-makers struggling with the questions of who represents who and, related to this, who to deal with when intervening in hybrid political orders. Political parties in ambiguous, contested and pluralist environments do not conveniently align with traditional understandings of parliamentary democracy, butcrucially bridging state and non-state actors, formal and informal governance institutions, and long-term systems and volatile political dynamicsthey do form sophisticated and fundamental hubs in hybrid governance structures that need to be acknowledged and engaged with.