The July 2012 Libyan Election and the Origin of Post-Qadhafi Appeasement

The July 2012 parliamentary election in Libya was free and fair. Nonetheless, the election exacerbated various local, tribal, and religious cleavages. The National Transitional Council’s policy of appeasement successfully averted widespread armed conflict, yet it inadvertently derailed Libya’s future constitutional process. This article surveys the main scholarly paradigms for analyzing both Libya after the fall of Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi and the role of elections in societies in transition. It concludes that the outcome of the 2012 Libyan election calls into question the ability of post-conflict elections to function as tools of democratization or as mechanisms to unify social fissures, especially in societies lacking in formal institutions.