Paper accepted on 31 July 2025
https://doi.org/10.18485/sres.2025.4.1.2
ABSTRACT: The paper explores the failure of UN and EU-led democratisation and stabilisation efforts in Libya following the 2011 regime change. Despite early involvement in supporting a democratic transition, both organisations quickly adopted a hands-off approach, contributing to the collapse of state authority and the rise of competing identities and security actors. Using a constructivist framework that incorporates ontological and societal security, the paper argues that Libya’s fragmentation stems from the absence of a unified national identity and the failure to construct a shared political narrative. In a country where identity has become tied to sub-national communities rather than the central nation and the state as its central authority, externally imposed democratisation without local legitimacy proved unsustainable. Through process tracing and document analysis, the study shows how the inconsistent engagement of international actors, combined with internal identity divisions and the lack of preparedness for democratisation, led to long-term insecurity and fragmentation. The findings highlight that democratisation without the necessary preconditions, such as the legitimacy of the central authorities and national cohesion, risks exacerbating instability rather than resolving it, especially when imposed from outside and when imposed in an incomplete and inconsistent manner upon an unready population.
KEY WORDS: Democratisation, intervention, stabilisation, peacebuilding, societal security, identity, constructivism.
