The articles gathered in this dossier offer insights, based on case studies, into the transformation of the “associative sector” in Lebanon, a sector generally seen to be at the core of an increasingly active civil society. Four of these studies relate to Lebanon, while the fifth brings a welcome comparison with the Palestinian case. The dossier also includes a review of a book that investigates the Lebanese and Libyan contexts.The reflections on civil society proposed in this issue of the Civil Society Review, in Lebanon as well as in Palestine open up toward further investigations and interrogations. For they not only question the State, its nature and its functions, but politics in a broader sense.