DEMOCRACY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRATISATION IN LIBYA

Abstract

The history of Libya for more than four decades revolved around Muammar Gaddafi and his regime. Noticeably, frosty relations between Gaddafi and the majority of Libyan people seemed not to have hindered the State’s ability and willingness to provide social goods needed for prosperity and development in Libya. Yet, demand for decentralization of governance structure, opening democratic space for popular participation, freedom, redressing human rights violation appeared to have instigated the popular uprising against the Gaddafi’s government. This paper argued that the persistence of the seemingly unresolved political crisis in Libya is attributable to the fact that the Libyan uprising was intended to collapse Gaddafi’s leadership without domestic democratic alternative platforms that possess the residue and are prepared to provide leadership. The paper concluded that the failure to conceive a democratic architecture and develop a civil society with internalised democratic values necessary for replacing the dismantled government and the State’s inability to contain the activities of Gaddafi’s loyalists’ couple with awful western economic interests have sustained violence and stultified democratisation in Libya. Documentary method of data collection is employed, while using qualitative descriptive analysis, the study relied on rentier theory of the state. It recommended national rebirth based on democratic principles and re-orientation to end frequent slide back to conflicts. This would serve as a prerequisite condition for the Libyan state to follow the path of national transformation.