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The Lebanese state is often depicted as failing to possess most of the properties through which political sociology usually defines state power. Therefore, scientific literature often describes it as a weak state or a failed state. This article questions the relevance of this description through a comparison between three legal mobilizations that took place in Lebanon over the last ten years (seeking the protection of endangered children, the protection of female victims of domestic violence and the modification of the custody age in favor of the mother in the Sunni community). These mobilizations occurred within the field of family law where the Lebanese state had never previously implemented any kind of central policies, and where every religious community has important legal and judicial autonomy. This article disputes claims of state absence by studying outputs and transformations that cannot be explained by the relations of power between the actors of mobilizations and counter-mobilizations. These state effects do not operate through traditional policy tools as identified by policy studies: budgets, bureaucracies, or central compulsory norms. Rather, it is a case of original forms of nationalization unfolding through competition, standardization or synthesis between conflicting socio-legal aspirations, all of which are incapable of being reconciled outside of central institutions.