Waller, Marion (2013). “The Elyssar project in Beirut and the big machine of implementation failure”, Essais des étudiants des masters urbains de Sciences Po, 2013-1, Paris, Sciences Po
Waller examines an urban public policy that has taken place in Lebanon: the “Elyssar” project, aiming at regenerating the southern suburbs of Beirut. The thesis is that when looking at the policy as a “big machine”, the necessary outcome of the process is the policy failure rather than its implementation. Non-implementation, even if generally seen as a negative outcome in policy analysis, seems not to be a failure for actors in this case. We show that actors such as Rafic Hariri, the Hezbollah and the Lebanese State had in fact more interest to stop at the policy-making stage because of its symbolic value. This policy-making stage is characterized by the focus on public policy instruments (the creation of a public agency for example), which has allowed both consensus and non-implementation. The paper has implications for the gap between officious and official policy-making, for policy evaluation and for the step-division of policy process: in our case, the process seems “complete” at the end of decision-making.