Bangladesh, Dec. 31 -- For more than six years, Lebanon has lived through what would normally be considered an impossible experiment: a society operating with a hollowed-out state. Public institutions barely function, banks are frozen or irrelevant to daily life, courts are slow and selectively applied, and the governments capacity to deliver even basic services is sharply constrained. Yet Lebanon has not ceased to exist. On the contrary, much of its society and economy has continued to function-often imperfectly, but sometimes surprisingly effectively-without meaningful state support. This reality forces an uncomfortable but necessary question: can Lebanon function better without a state, or at least without the kind of state it has know...