Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2020
The Libyan case study in Chapter 3 reveals how harrowing the introduction of democratic elections can be in countries without national unity or any of the attributes of a modern state. Qaddafi’s ideology of a stateless, egalitarian society based on an idiosyncratic blend of Islamic and Marxist concepts left Libya’s transitional regime largely without a bureaucratic apparatus to implement policies. Qaddafi had also reinvigorated Libya’s tribal system by favoring his own and punishing the region and tribes that were the base of support for the prior monarchical regime. Competitive elections in Libya were implemented in a country without a national military that could monopolize the use of violence. In its place, during the civil war, a welter of regional, local, tribal, and ideological militias – some more powerful than the “national military” – emerged and prevented transitional governments from being able to provide peace and security for Libyans. There was also a military strongman in Libya, General Haftar, seeking to utilize the near anarchic conditions to forge a military authoritarian regime – by reining in the militias and providing desperately needed security.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.