Outside the Beltway

Qaddafi Son’s Dissertation

James Joyner · Wednesday, September 16, 2009 · 4 comments

Saif Qaddafi, son of Libyan dictator Muammar, has completed a doctoral dissertation bemoaning the lack of democracy in the world.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said the current system of global governance was “highly undemocratic”. He hit out at undemocratic states whose governments were “authoritarian, abusive and unrepresentative”.

His father Muammar Gaddafi came to power in a coup in 1969 and has ruled Libya for 40 years. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, 37, continues to play a prominent role within the Libyan political landscape.

[…]

The dissertation is called “The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions: From Soft Power to Collective Decision Making?” Mr Gaddafi wrote: “I shall be primarily concerned with what I argue is the central failing of the current system of global governance in the new global environment: that it is highly undemocratic.” He continued that his dissertation would “analyse the problem of how to create more just and democratic global governing institutions”, focusing on the importance of the role of “civil society”.

I’m not sure what’s more amusing: The incongruity with his research findings and his father’s station or, as Josh Keating points out, that he hired the Monitor Group to do most of the actual research.  Somehow, that seems to violate the spirit of the thing.  Not to mention, a touch undemocratic.