Public employees cooperative laws adopted

State employees were the first to benefit from social security schemes in Lebanon. The constitution of cooperatives for civil servants, security forces, and military personnel constitute a bold step of the developmentalist strategy of Fuad Shehab’s presidency (in office 1958-1964). Social policies promoted by the latter were linked to a larger plan aiming at building a centralized state, which would undermine the hegemony of sectarian-based power. This explains why, to this day, social security schemes for public employees offer the widest coverage among the Lebanese social security schemes (Scala 2022). For instance, they are the only ones that receive a retirement pension while their peers in the private sector only have access to modest end-of-service indemnities.