أوراق الدولة: الولايات المتحدة الليبية

Description

Abstract

The State Papers, which constitute the first seed of the United States of Libya project, do not position themselves in the same league as conventional books or academic studies confined by rigid rules. Rather, they position themselves as a dialectical founding document in which law meets philosophy, and political analysis coexists with historical lessons, becoming more akin to a republican discourse that seeks to address both reason and conscience. They do not confine themselves to presenting concepts as abstract definitions, but rather seek to ground them in Libyan reality by highlighting the contradiction experienced by the nation between its aspiration for unity and the tyranny and fragmentation imposed by centralization. They are as if to say that the lesson learned from modern and contemporary history is that centralized tyranny was not a path to unity but rather a tool for its destruction, and that federalism is not a formal decoration but the final safety valve for the unity of the state amidst diversity.

The central argument upon which the papers build their case is that the republic is founded neither upon sentiment nor upon narrow personal or party loyalties, but upon an establishment of political restraint whereby the public interest is protected from being subordinated to those who would seek to govern and exploit power. The papers thus characterize federalism as a subtle balance attending to the relationship between the constituent units and the central power which precludes any one unit from dominating another and so precipitating the dissolution of the states or reducing the central authority to a spoil for despotism. This proposition is nothing new to the history of constitutions; it was precedented at Philadelphia when it there weighed the dangers represented by partition and anarchy with those represented by despotism and concluded with the realization that neither resides in an absolutist concentration nor its dissolution, but in union based upon a voluntary compact by its constituents with protection to its rights and corporeal integrity.

Others might wonder at Western sources being relied upon in academic debates upon federalism. The reason for doing so is neither any tendency towards dependency nor any appreciation for overseas models but is based upon an acknowledgement about federalism's genesis and development being located in Western traditions, namely countries like America, Germany, Belgium, and India. These historical examples are cited by way of recourse to source ideas akin to how a scholar of law would return to linguistic sources to determine meanings embedded in Islamic jurisprudence. In the Arab world, exhaustive literature to cover federalism has hardly existed and is to be attributed to either a foreordained bias whereby federalism is equated with secession or to a thin interpretation whereby it is identified with decentralization by administration and with a lack to distinguish fiscal federalism from constitutional and political federalism. Accordingly, recourse to these original sources is necessary to determine federalism's genesis before it can be recast with all applicable implications to cover a purely national and sovereign setting.

The characteristic of these papers is their unwillingness to surrender to the cited literature or to worship it. They undertake a critical analysis of those sources, characteristic of an independent republican mind, purging ideas of extraneous matter and redesigning them to fit Libyan circumstances. The citation of authors like Weir, Riker, and Eleazar is not an end objective; it is a methodological procedure, analogous to using tools not to adore them but to work with them while developing one's project oneself. The author is not asking for Western paradigms' approval for work done by him; he is judging the West by its own standards. The author then re-inscribes his argument in a Libyan framework and seeks to convert federalism to a workable concept within the Arabic environment, doing so to prevent it from being considered to belong elsewhere but to suit local requirements and interests and historic circumstances.

The papers therefore do not define federalism as a rigid ideological template; rather, they theorize it as a reinvigorated initiative of the constitution needing constant refining and shaping. At the same time, however, they warn flexibility can turn to chaos unless it is governed by legal ordinances and republican virtue. The authors show us that true union strength is neither based upon central militarization nor upon states' separation, but upon a social contract granting a harmonious relationship among these entities similar to that of a part to a whole. Thus, the United States of Libya proposal is neither a sheer theoretical outline for a new federalism; it is an invitation to renew itself to the very notion of the republic: that the nation should govern itself, its laws being safeguards for liberty and its constitution an instrument to fend off individual whims and factional greed while still being true to its prime goals: preserving unity with freedom, founding sovereignty upon justice, and protecting its nation from despotism and breakup.