Elections and statebuilding after civil war: Lurching toward legitimacy

Abstract

On July 7, 2012, just nine months after the death of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi ended the country’s civil war on the battlefield of Sirte, Libyans went to polls to elect a new transitional government that would ultimately, in a constitutional assembly (General National Congress), negotiate a new relationship between the people and the state. In the elections, some 274 political parties registered to contend for the 80 party seats in the new assembly, and there were more than 2600 candidates for the 120 candidate-based seats. While there was violence, particularly in the Benghazi region – and a staged boycott by major local parties – the poll was remarkably peaceful for an initial post-civil war electoral process. Perhaps equally remarkably, the Libyans conducted the elections with a high degree of ‘local ownership,’ with a small-footprint size UN political mission giving, primarily, technical, logistical, and capacity development assistance. Few analysts doubted, at the end of the day, that the Libyan elections imbued the new transitional government with a new sense of internal, local legitimacy to inherit the deeply disabled Libyan state.