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“Institutionalizing Democratic Failure” in Libya

Geoff Porter has identified a serious flaw in Libya’s new election law that will keep the militias from disarming and disbanding: One of the proposed solutions for resolving the situation is to recruit more than 50,000 militia members into a regular, professionalized Libyan military under the control of the Ministry of Defense (other militia members […]

Geoff Porter has identified a serious flaw in Libya’s new election law that will keep the militias from disarming and disbanding:

One of the proposed solutions for resolving the situation is to recruit more than 50,000 militia members into a regular, professionalized Libyan military under the control of the Ministry of Defense (other militia members would presumably turn over their weapons of their own accord as economic opportunities increase, and still others would be disarmed through weapons buy-back programs).

And this is the problem with the electoral law: Why would militias, whose members can vote and thus express themselves as a powerful bloc, disband so their members can join the military, which is explicitly excluded from elections? In other words, the law’s consequences — keeping the militias alive — will run directly counter to its aim, namely that of reducing the role of armed groups in Libyan politics.

There is something else about this provision that seems misguided. The desire to have a military that is not politicized is understandable, but excluding members of the military from the political process deprives them of any stake in the survival of the new order. Barred from political participation, members of the military will have a weaker attachment to Libya’s new institutions, which will create incentives for some or most of them to seize control of those institutions or abolish them all together. As Porter reminds us, the Libyan military is institutionally weak and very much unlike the Egyptian military. The electoral law is guarding against a remote danger while exacerbating all of the causes of instability in Libya.

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