Atlas / Organisations / Hezbollah
Hezbollah
1982– · Lebanon · Islamist · Movement · coding confidence medium
Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →
Core principles
Armed resistance to Israel, Shia community defence, and allegiance to the Iranian supreme leader.
Economic model
Extensive social service, clinic and reconstruction networks funded externally; parallel to the Lebanese state.
Organisation of powers
Contests Lebanese elections while maintaining an army outside state control.
Reading note
A party, a militia and a welfare provider at once — a structure that appears repeatedly in weak-state settings and fits no standard party taxonomy.
Check a claim about Hezbollah. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
Open in the atlasThe evidence for every score
All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.
EC · Economic organisation · scored −03
Coded −3: extensive social provision funded externally.
- Documented act or statuteOperates schools, hospitals and reconstruction programmes in parallel to the Lebanese state.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored +09
Coded +9: Shia religious authority over social life.
- Programme textThe 1985 open letter declares allegiance to the Iranian supreme leader.
AU · Organisation of power · scored +07
Coded +7: contests elections while maintaining an army outside state control.
- Documented act or statuteHas held parliamentary seats and ministries since 1992 while retaining independent armed forces.
SC · Scale of decision · scored +03
Coded +3: a Lebanese party within a transnational alignment.
- Documented act or statuteFought in Syria from 2013 on the direction of its regional alignment rather than Lebanese policy.
ID · Rule of membership · scored +08
Coded +8: confessional membership in a confessional political system.
- Documented act or statuteLebanon's system allocates offices by sect; the party is the principal Shia vehicle.
CH · Method and tempo · scored +05
Coded +5: armed force as a constitutive rather than instrumental commitment.
- Documented act or statuteThe May 2008 seizure of parts of Beirut turned those arms on domestic opponents.
Where it came from, and what came after
- takes its doctrine fromKhomeinism
Founded in 1982 with Revolutionary Guard assistance and allegiance to the supreme leader.
Nearest organisations by measured distance
Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.
Countries
Cite this page
Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.
Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.