In the preface of the book, El-Kikhia writes that the book is not necessarily intended for experts on Libya, but is instead intended more for students/journalists/lay people. I find that establishing this target audience really helped El-Kikhia in his book because he focused on creating a coherent whole that could be easily understood. But at the same time he went into deep detail where he felt it was appropriate and helped the overall quality of the work.
I always found it impressive that despite being Libyan, El-Kikhia was able to write a comprehensive work about Libya under Gadhafi without exhibiting any type of bias. I say this because there is almost no work by Libyans on Libya that aren't pro-Gadhafi or anti-Gadhafi. There is no question that a person always has an opinion or view of some sort of their home country and its leaders. For El-Kikhia to put any such opinion and bias aside, and focus instead on providing an account of Libya based through a political, economic, and social lens was very impressive.
The only point of negative criticism that I would offer of this book would be the quality of the part of the book dealing with Libya's economy. I found it to be somewhat too general at times and lacking the details that were found in others parts of the book dealing with the political and social aspects of Libya under Gadhafi. The best and most valuable aspect of the book is the clear and concise description it offers of the political structure of Libya under Gadhafi.
As a whole, I would definitely recommend this book to any other students out there doing any research on Libya during the rule of Gadhafi. Even though it is more than a decade old, the insight into Gadhafi's mind and his country that El-Kikhia's work offers is timeless.
El-Kikhia, Mansour O. Libya's Qaddafi: the politics
of contradiction. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997.
Interesting review, and it looks like an interesting book. I'd like to read more about what the book actually says about Qaddafi's rule, and how he organized his institutions.
ReplyDeleteI had conversation about Libya last weekend at the Northeastern Political Science Association meeting in Philadelphia. One of the presenters in a panel that I chaired discussed the expectations for successful reconstruction in post-war Libya. His sense was that, in large part because of the structure of the insurgency against Qaddafi, there was a very strong likelihood that there would be intense factionalisation and potentially even post-war fighting. This seems like a pretty accurate assessment, but at the same time, it also seems that part of the reason for the structure of the insurgency because of the context that Qaddafi himself had built up.
Also, you may want to read and comment on Paige's posts, if you haven't already. There is a good deal of overlap between your projects and you should have a strong conversation going.
Best,
Prof. Cocozzelli