PARTY IN THE ARAB STREET: DYNAMICS OF PARTISAN ENGAGEMENT IN LEBANON’S OCTOBER 17 REVOLUTION*

Dual engagement, the phenomenon in which party loyalists participate in antisystem protests, emerged as a defining feature of Lebanon's 2019–2021 period of civil unrest. This crosspartisan participation revealed the strategic role that opposition parties play in shaping mass mobilization efforts. To explain this phenomenon, this study investigates both the political conditions and individual-level factors that enabled such seemingly contradictory participation. Using Arab Barometer data, various political participation theories are tested to identify the key predictors of dual engagement. The findings demonstrate that partisan factors are more significant predictors than traditional protest motivations, suggesting that partisans engage in antisystem mobilizations strategically to advance their parties' interests. As a result, opposition parties emerge as the primary drivers of their supporters' protest participation. This dynamic underscores how partisan commitment can strategically redirect protests from an antisystem orientation to an antigovernment focus. These findings have important implications for understanding political behavior in antisystem mobilizations and illuminate the complex interplay between political parties and social movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa.