After the assassination of Rafiq Hariri (14 February 2005) and the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon (April 2005), Hariri’s son, Sa‘d, attempted to federate a national Sunni political public mobilised against Syria, Hizbullah, and Iran. The study argues that Hariri failed to mobilize the different components of Tripoli’s political field over time. Why were Hariri and Future not successful in mobilising the anti-Syrian potential in North Lebanon? Attempting to answer this question, the study uses the notion of a political public elaborated by John Dewey (1859-1952). A public is a collective of individuals united in political action through a perception of common interests. The dissertation begins in 1967 and ends in 2011, with a Post-Script on the dynamics after 2011. It is divided in three parts. The first analyses the local dynamics in Tripoli between 1967 and 1985. The second part dissects the decomposition of Tripoli’s political field and the rise of Salafism during the period of pax syriana in Tripoli (1985-2005). The third part investigates Hariri’s attempt to create a political public and the competition from Tripoli’s Salafis, after 2005. The main argument is that three types of obstacles made Hariri’s public very likely to fail. The first was the Syrian bureaucratic obstacles, in other words, Syrian prior governmentality of Sunnism in Tripoli in the 1976-2005 period. The second obstacle was Arab nationalism’s loss of impetus after the mid-1980s and the fact that Sunni leaders often lacked a militant cause, for which followers were willing to risk their lives. The third obstacle was the presence of Salafism as a transnational, religious counter-public.