On Friday, June 16th, Lebanon quietly ended one of the longest stretches of government paralysis in post-Second World War history. The parliament met to ratify a new electoral law that will govern national elections next year, nearly a decade after the last parliamentary polls were held. The law’s proponents claim that it will improve representation for the many sects that compose the country’s religiously diverse population. They say it also addresses demands by civil-society groups who have railed against the propensity of the political élite to pass power down through the generations and keep reformists at bay. In Beirut, there is both cynicism and optimism about what the new law might deliver. Mostly, though, one senses an uncertainty about the future—a familiar enough feeling in a country that endured a brutal, fifteen-year civil war, but unfamiliar in other ways. There is a genuine wondering-aloud as to whether a new chapter in Lebanon’s history might be about to begin, and some hope that a political system built on the principle of fostering coexistence might be insulated from a region wracked by sectarianism.

Since the onset of the Arab Spring, in early 2011, Lebanese politics have been gridlocked. Unlike in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria, no street demonstrations emerged calling for the fall of the regime. Yet Lebanon’s weak central government struggled to hold itself together. Parliamentary elections were cancelled in 2013, after the country’s main political forces were unable to agree on which side to back in the Syrian civil war, on the election of the next Lebanese President, and on the country’s support for the U.N. Special Tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The current parliament has used dubious pretexts to extend its term three times, all while failing to address deep crises in the provision of basic public services, from electricity to waste disposal. As a result, public trust in the government’s legitimacy is at the lowest point since the early aughts, when Syria’s government still controlled Lebanon.

Numerous dynamics feed the paralysis, but at its heart is a debate about the viability of Lebanon’s consociational government, which distributes power among the country’s religious communities. Seats in parliament are split evenly between Christians and Muslims, and the main offices of President, Prime Minister, and Speaker of Parliament are reserved for Maronite Christians, Sunnis, and Shiites, respectively. This arrangement has been in place, in one shape or another, since Lebanon’s independence, in 1943, even though the consensual decision-making that it engenders is notoriously inefficient and prone to destabilization. In short, it enables any one stakeholder to easily play spoiler.

The question of how to hold an election under such a system has bedeviled Lebanese politics for decades, but the past few years have witnessed a particularly engaged bout of soul-searching. Ramez Dagher, the author of a well-known political blog called Moulahazat, recently wrote that it has taken “two Presidents, four Prime Ministers, five [cabinets] and at least twenty different possible draft electoral laws” to arrive at the solution finally approved in parliament earlier this month. At stake was not only the problem of how to share power among the traditional representatives of Lebanon’s religious communities but also how to facilitate the emergence of nonsectarian political parties, a core demand of Lebanon’s increasingly activist civil society.

The new electoral law adopts a system of proportional representation for the first time in Lebanese history, replacing the majoritarian principle that has governed the country’s elections since independence. Rather than facing off in a winner-takes-all contest, parties competing in a given district will be awarded seats according to the proportion of the vote that they win. In theory, this system will clear the way for independent candidates outside the traditional political class to gain a foothold. The new threshold for winning a seat is substantially lower than in previous elections, creating opportunities for reformers with little political experience to enter parliament.

If independent candidates do decide to test the waters in next year’s election, they will likely push a message of change and reform to a public that is desperate for better governance. George Ajjan, a Beirut-based political strategist, told me that insurgent parties will need to structure their campaigns “around key issues like electricity provision, waste disposal, health, education, and jobs.”

There are economic incentives for politicians to bury the hatchet. Lebanon is eager to exploit the potentially vast natural-gas fields off its coast, joining initiatives already under way in Israel, Cyprus, and Egypt. And an enormous backlog of legislative issues awaits attention, including increasing public-sector pay and overhauling the electricity sector. The Lebanese government’s sclerosis has also slowed the flow of international aid for refugees. Support from the World Bank, for instance, is contingent on the government passing a budget.

Civil-society leaders, however, seem unimpressed by the law, citing the lack of quotas for female candidates, the lax campaign-financing regulations, and the absence of an independent commission to supervise the elections. “It’s akin to putting new tires on an old car,” one longtime observer of Lebanese elections told me. “New tires are useful when it’s a beloved classic car that speeds along, but essentially pointless when the car is a dysfunctional old banger.”

Critics also point out that the new law redraws electoral districts in an overly sectarian fashion, insuring that parliamentarians are elected mainly by their own co-religionists, rather than by voters from different sects. Lebanon’s Christian parties have long complained that previous electoral laws required many Christian members of parliament to be elected by Muslim majorities, a demographic reality in a country where Christians no longer represent half the population. Meanwhile, Sunni and Shiite candidates won elections in districts dominated by members of their own sects.

Under the new system, the two largest Christian parties in Lebanon—the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces—worked with the architects of the new law to create an electoral map that greatly increases the number of Christians elected primarily by Christians. To most secularists, this new scheme smacks of an entrenchment of sectarianism, rewarding candidates for catering to their own religious communities rather than trying to appeal to a more diverse electorate.

Alain Aoun, a member of parliament from the predominantly Christian Free Patriotic Movement, disagreed, and said that the new system “lessens sectarian tensions, which usually stem from a feeling of injustice in the representation of certain communities.” He argued that Christian voters are more likely to vote for candidates on the basis of their policy platform rather than their sectarian identity if they don’t fear that their representatives in parliament will be chosen predominantly by members of another sect.

Dr. Basem Shabb, a member of parliament allied to the mainly Sunni Future Movement, who holds a seat reserved for Protestants, told me that a deep sense of vulnerability across all the country’s groups forced its political factions to finally agree to the law: “All the sects have existential issues as well as electoral ones,” he said. “The Shiites are isolated. The Druzes want a guarantee that they are properly represented. Even the Sunnis feel targeted because of what’s happening in Syria and Iraq. And, of course, the Christians have their concerns.”

Surprisingly, that sense of shared vulnerability has created a renewed, if wearied, spirit of local collaboration. Rather than expecting regional politics to change the status quo in Lebanon, as many factions have done for many years, local parties have decided to make their peace at the Lebanese negotiating table, even if next year’s election could threaten their hold on the country’s governance. “The players have not yet digested the rules of the new game,” Shabb told me. “Of course, they’re going to go back and run statistics and numbers and figure out what they want to do. But I think it’s going to be a surprise.”