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Libya
The Green Book, Part I
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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