Full of sound and fury, elections in Lebanon have disgorged what will almost certainly become a government of national unity presiding over a parliament of national division. The pro-western alliance that holds the majority in the present coalition, led by Saad Hariri’s Future movement, won against most expectations. But the Hizbollah-led alliance, which holds a blocking minority inside the current government, held its position.

In spite of a campaign characterised by stridency bordering on the apocalyptic, not much is likely to change – nor, in all probability, would it have if the result had gone the other way. The sectarian constraints binding all Lebanon’s myriad parties into a complex power-sharing equation make it very difficult to change the political calculus; even periodic resort to war or the car bomb has failed to resolve who governs Lebanon.