LIBYA STARTS FROM SCRATCH

Creating democracy and institutions side-by-side is immensely challenging, since fledgling democracy must rely on working institutions that can legitimate it and enable it to deliver the public goods (order, prosperity, and the rest) that any government worthy of the name must provide. The legacy of crushed, shattered, starved, and neglected institutions that Qadhafi left behind has placed a gigantic task on the shoulders of leaders who are not short of good inten- tions and Western expertise, but are stymied by a lack of institutional capacity to enforce the rule of law and implement reform.