Libya, Social Origins of Dictatorship, and the Challenge for Democracy

Abstract

This article analyzes the 2011 revolution in Libya by focusing on three elements: the Qaddafi regime's failure to address the question of political reform and its subsequent alienation of important elite groups within the country; the impact of demography, urbanization, and global social media on the progress of the revolution; and the success of an enterprising revolutionary leadership within Libya that was able to obtain critical diplomatic and military support from the United Nations, the Arab League, and NATO. The main thesis of this article is that the regime's inability to make serious political reforms appropriate to changes occurring in the economy, education, and society eventually led to conflict between a dynamic social structure and a rigid political system that was unable to meet the demands and grievances of new social forces, especially unemployed youth. The gap between the Libyan youth and the ruling elite undermined the gains achieved by the regime during the 1970s and eventually led to the formation of an alienated revolutionary coalition. Had Muammar Qaddafi responded with openness to the calls for reform and not overreacted to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, the urban elite in Libya might have been placated and the violent rebellion might have been avoided.

KEYWORDS:

• Arab League
• Arab Spring
• Libya
• NATO
• Qaddafi
• revolution
• social media
• United Nations
• youth

Notes

¹I. R. Khalidi, Constitutional Development in Libya (Beirut: Khayyat's College Books, 1963), 62–63. For UN Commissioner Adrian Pelt's own account, see his book, Libyan Independence and the United Nations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970).

²United Nations Human Development Programme. Human Development Report 2010: 20th Anniversary Edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

³An Interview with Libyan sociologist Muhammad Naji, Sabha University Libya, May 20, 2010. Also see Mustafa Umar al-Tir, Hula Mustaqbal al - ‘Awdaa al-Ma’ ishiyya, [On the Future of Social Conditions] Tripoli. Dar al-Acadimiyya Lil Nashir, 2000. p. 90, and Zainab M. Zuhri and Salih al-Zain, Al Mara' al-Libiyya fi 'Ashrin' Aman, 1969–1989, [The Libyan Arab Woman in Twenty Years, 1969–1989]. Benghazi: University Press, 1989. pp. 20–24.

⁴The name Jamahiriya was created by Qaddafi himself in 1977. It comes from the Arabic word jamahir, “masses” and the state of the masses would be Jamahiriya. Qaddafi distinguished it from republic because he argued it is a defective form of government and his Jamahiriya is a true and new direct democracy.

⁵Transparency International. Corruption Perceptions Index 2010. Transparency International, 2010 <www.transparency.org>.

⁶On the impact of oil on Libya, see J. A. Allan, Libya: The Experience of Oil (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981); D. Vandewalle, “The Libyan Arab Jamahiriyya since 1969,” in Qadhafi's Libya, ed. D. Vandewalle, 3–46 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995); and S. Birks and C. Sinclair, “Libya: Problems of a Rentier State,” in North Africa: Contemporary Politics and Economic Development, eds. R. Lawless and A. Findlay, 241–275 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984).

⁷Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, Forgotten Voices: Power and Agency in Colonial and Postcolonial Libya (New York: Routledge, 2005), 65–85.

⁸J. Davis, Libyan Politics: Tribe and Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 71–91; Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya, 2nd ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 51–54.

⁹Said Haddaadt, “The Role of the Libyan Army in the Revolt against Gaddafi's Regime” (Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Doha, Qatar, March 16, 2011), 2–5, http://www.aljazeera.net/mritems/streams/2011/3/17/1_1048489_1_51.pdf.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ali Abdullatif Ahmida

ALI ABDULLATIF AHMIDA is a professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. He is the author of The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonization, and Resistance (State of New York University Press, rev. ed., 2009) and Forgotten Voices: Power and Agency in Colonial and Postcolonial Libya (Routledge, 2005), among other works.