Competing claims of authority and persistent instability have had a profound impact on national politics in Libya. Yet despite national fragmentation, efforts to empower local governance bodies through a process of decentralization could contribute to what will be a long-term process of rebuilding the Libyan state. In the absence of capable and unified national institutions, local authorities, primarily municipal councils, have emerged as among the most trusted governing bodies in Libya. Such reliance on local solutions to national problems should not be interpreted as a rejection of the national state but rather a rejection of the centralized state. The challenge facing Libya’s political elites is how to accommodate this trend while acknowledging the long-term necessity of an efficient national state capable of managing and redistributing national resources and overseeing a responsible system of local governance. While this chapter argues that tangible progress toward decentralization could play a major role contributing to the stabilization of Libya, it recognizes that local processes are likely to remain that way – localized rather than systematic – absent a unified national stabilization effort that can integrate small-scale successes into a comprehensive political agreement. For all its promise, local governance alone cannot carry the burden of stabilization in Libya.

Abstract

The case of Libya in the so-called Arab Spring has been widely debated and repeatedly marked by uncertainties and complexities. To point out the main features of the Libyan case, this chapter analyses the causes and the socio-economic drivers and forces at play in the Libyan revolution, the role played by outside powers, both Western and Arab, before, during and after the international military intervention, and finally the challenges and prospects for a successful political transition, pluralistic transformation and consolidation in Libya. The Libyan revolution will have a profound impact on local and international politics. Many local counterweights to central authority emerged during and after the war in the form of local councils and militias whose membership was based on cities, families and tribes. Indeed, the first important effect of the revolution on the country is the rediscovery of local ties at the subregional level (local and tribal). In addition to that, new values, based on pluralism and participation in the political life of the country, have emerged. Whether the older allegiances will merge with the new values and produce a vibrant and democratic republic or will clash and return to a dictatorship is the point of the struggle ahead.