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Libya
Index
In April 1974, Qadhafi relinquished his governmental duties to
devote full time to ideological concerns and mass organization. A
year later, he announced the reorganization of the ASU to include
popular congresses, topped by the GPC. In March 1977, the GPC
became, at least formally, the primary instrument of government in
Libya. The reorganization of the ASU and the elevation of the GPC
were carried out in conjunction with Qadhafi's political theories
found in his work, The Green Book, Part I: The Solution of the
Problem of Democracy.
The Green Book begins with the premise that all
contemporary political systems are merely the result of the
struggle for power between instruments of governing. Those
instruments of governing--parliaments, electoral systems,
referenda, party government--are all undemocratic, divisive, or
both. Parliaments are based on indirect democracy or
representation. Representation is based on separate constituencies;
deputies represent their constituencies, often against the
interests of other constituencies. Thus, the total national
interest is never represented, and the problem of indirect (and
consequently unrepresentative) democracy is compounded by the
problem of divisiveness. Moreover, an electoral system in which the
majority vote wins all representation means that as much as 49
percent of the electorate is unrepresented. (A win by a plurality
can have the result that an even greater percentage of the
electorate is unrepresented; electoral schemes to promote
proportional representation increase the overall representative
nature of the system, but small minorities are still left
unrepresented.) Qadhafi also believes referenda are undemocratic
because they force the electorate to answer simply yes or no to
complex issues without being able to express fully their will. He
says that because parties represent specific interests or classes,
multiparty political systems are inherently factionalized. In
contrast, a single-party political system has the disadvantage of
institutionalizing the dominance of a single interest or class.
Qadhafi believes that political systems have used these kinds
of indirect or representative instruments because direct democracy,
in which all participate in the study and debate of issues and
policies confronting the nation, ordinarily is impossible to
implement in contemporary times. Populations have grown too large
for direct democracy, which remained only an ideal until the
formulation of the concepts of people's committees and popular
congresses.
Most observers would conclude that these organizations, like
congresses or parliaments in other nations, obviously involve some
degree of delegation and representation. Qadhafi, however, believes
that with their creation contemporary direct democracy has been
achieved in Libya. Qadhafi bases this conviction on the fact that
the people's committees and popular congresses are theoretically
responsible not only for the creation of legislation, but also its
implementation at the grass-roots level. Moreover, they have a much
larger total membership as a percentage of the national population
than legislative bodies in other countries.
In many ways, Qadhafi's political ideology is part of the
radical strain of Western democratic thought associated primarily
with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. For, as scholar Sami Hajjar noted,
Qadhafi's notions of popular sovereignty are quite similar to the
Rousseauian concept of general will. Both hold that sovereignty is
inalienable, indivisible, and infallible. Both believe in equality
and in direct popular rule. Thus, concludes Qadhafi, "the outdated
definition of democracy--democracy is the supervision of the
government by the people--becomes obsolete. It will be replaced by
the true definition: democracy is the supervision of the people by
the people."
Data as of 1987
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