The tribes and civil war in Libya : tribes and militias post Arab Springs in the process of political transition

Abstract

The following project has as its goal to refine Downes & Monten’s Foreign-Imposed Regime Change (FIRC) literature based on the Libyan military intervention in 2011 while using quantitative and qualitative analysis. According to FIRC, a successful intervention to implant a democratic transition must be in a country that possessed economic development, previous democratic experience, and ethnic-religious homogeneity before the intervention. In addition, FIRC defends that institution type interventions are more successful than leadership interventions. Based on this literature, it was clear that the Libyan case would not be able to have a successful political transition, however, after much analysis, it was found that FIRC variables were not enough to truly comprehend the reason for Libya to have entered civil war instead of becoming a democracy. This paper adds two more variables to better explain Libya’s political process, which are the tribes and militias. The analysis will present the historical context of Libya, and how the tribes and militias were fundamental political instruments before the intervention. It will also be discussed the Libyan case study based on the FIRC literature and later on the addition of the two variables before mentioned.