Libya after the Civil War: The Legacy of the Past and Economic Reconstruction

Abstract

Eyen while the country’s civil war was still raging in 2011, members of Libya’s Transitional National Council in Benghazi realized that the challenges to reconstructing the country in the aftermath of a 42-year long period that was aimed at destroying both the structures of a modern state and of a collective identity, would be enormous. They understood very clearly that this reconstruction would involve, among many other difficult tasks, the creation of modern state institutions, the consolidation of the “monopoly of violence” by a central government, the process of legitimizing whatever new political structures emerge, infusing the rule of law, creating democratic institutions and a sense of citizenship, providing for law and order within an accountable and transparent political system, and creating some sort of mechanism for national reconciliation and for transitional justice. Finally, but crucially, they also knew that Libya would need to rebuild its national economy in such a fashion that it could not once again become the kind of patronage system that for so long kept the Qadhafi government in power and, simultaneously, made most Libyan citizens bystanders if not outsiders of the political and economic life of their own country.