On Jan. 21, Lebanese leaders agreed to form a new government.

It had been a long time coming: The previous government, led by Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the country’s top Sunni politician, resigned in October. That was two weeks after protests erupted across the country, seeking to topple the corrupt, sectarian elite that has ruled since the end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war in 1990. The protesters demanded a new cabinet, led by specialists.

After dragging its feet, the Lebanese political establishment has at last offered one. Though a coalition of Western-leaning groups, including Mr. Hariri’s Future Movement, decided not to participate, the new government is hardly a break from the old: Some of its technocratic members are connected to parties allied with Hezbollah. Predictably, the announcement has not ended the mass protests.

The new cabinet faces multiple crises that could lead to economic and political collapse: The public debt stands at $86 billion, or more than 150 percent of gross domestic product; the government is failing to provide basic services, like electricity, water and garbage collection; foreign currency has dried up; and the Lebanese pound, which has been pegged to the dollar since 1997, has lost more than 60 percent of its value on the black market in recent weeks.

In one of the cabinet’s first steps, the newly appointed finance minister said he would try to secure $4 to $5 billion in loans from international donors to help pay for imports of fuel, wheat and medicine. So far, Lebanon’s traditional backers — Europe and Arab states in the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar — have shied away from providing new loans before the government undertakes significant reforms, such as reducing the public payroll and combating corruption and tax evasion.