Saif Gaddafi's PhD thesis

Reports are that up to 32 of Gaddafi’s family and senior staff have fled to Niger. Among them is Gaddafi’s personal bodyguard Mansur Daou, three loyalist generals, and two of his most wanted sons, Saif al-Islam and Abdullah al-Senussi.

Senussi may be extradited to France, since he was sentenced to life in prison in absentia for the in 1989 bombing of a a French airliner that killed 170 people. He is also expected to stand in front of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in relation to crimes against humanity committed whilst Gaddafi’s intelligence chief.

Gaddafi’s one-time heir apparent Saif is also wanted by the ICC for his role in Libya’s recent conduct. Speaking earlier this year to Reuters, Saif made his position clear: “We fight here in Libya; we die here in Libya”.

Overnight reports emerged that Saif was willing to be flown to the Hague to face the charges of the ICC, rather than stay in Niger. Facing that prospect, no doubt Saif will be rueing his philosophising on the implications of undemocratic governance and the abuse of state power in his – now widely read – doctoral thesis.

Take for example these excerpts from his thesis, titled The role of civil society in the democratisation of global governance institutions: From “soft power” to collective decision-making?, awarded by the London School of Economics (LSE) in September 2008 after obtaining a place to complete a MSc in 2003 under equally controversial circumstances.

In his introduction, Saif suggests:

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 (p.12).

and that:

This dissertation analyses the problem of how to create more just and democratic global governing institutions, exploring the approach of a more formal system of collective decision-making by the three main actors in global society: governments, civil society and the business sector. The thesis explains and adopts three philosophical foundations in support of the argument. The first is liberal individualism; the thesis argues that there are strong motivations for free individuals to seek fair terms of cooperation within the necessary constraints of being members of a global society. Drawing on the works of David Hume, John Rawls and Ned McClennen, it elaborates significant self-interested and moral motives that prompt individuals to seek cooperation on fair terms if they expect others to do so. Secondly, it supports a theory of global justice, rejecting the limits of Rawls’s view of international justice based on what he calls ‘peoples’ rather than persons. Thirdly, the thesis adopts and applies David Held’s eight cosmopolitan principles to support the concept and specific structures of ‘Collective Management’ (p.3)

Locke saw people as being able to live together in the state of nature under natural law, irrespective of the policies of the state. This self-sufficiency of society, outside the control of the state, was given weight by the growing power of the economic sphere which was considered part of civil society, not the state. The state is therefore constructed out of, and given legitimacy by, society, which also retains the authority to dissolve the government if it acted unjustly. Other writers continued with this distinction of civil society and government. The state kept its function of maintaining law and order that Hobbes had stressed, but was considered to be separate from society, and the relationship between the two of them was seen to be subject to laws that gained their legitimacy from society, not from the state. For example, Montesquieu saw the state as the governor and society as the governed, with civil law acting as the regulator of the relationship. The importance of law in regulating the way the state and society interacted was obvious to many writers who considered that a government that did not recognise the limitations of law would extend to become an over-reaching tyranny similar to that described by Hobbes in Leviathan (p.41).

Subsequent to the outbreak of conflict, allegations emerged in Libya and the UK of wholesale plagiarism throughout Saif’s thesis, as well as considerable coercion by senior LSE staff to deny Saif candidature contrary to campaigning. The university’s chancellor and one of its academics has resigned, and an inquiry is underway into the affair.

Tripoli University has also asked the LSE to return £1.5m pledged to the LSE’s Centre for Global Governance by the Gaddafi’s, it claims illegally and for personal benefit.

One of his thesis examiners Professor Meghnad Desai, himself a former professor of LSE, has rebutted claims he awarded Saif a PhD under pressure from university management. As have his primary advisor, Professor David Held and Professor Lord Antony Giddens. Professor Held went so far as to say:

“The Saif I came to know was one committed to strong liberal values and democratic standards,” Held said. “He looked very much to Britain and to the US for inspiration and he certainly was passionately committed to constitutional reform of his country, the rule of law, to democratic elections and to human rights”.

Indeed Saif took the role of spokesperson for the Gaddafi regime from the outset of the conflict. In one 20 minute interview with Al Jazeera earlier this year, Saif appeared relaxed and defended the position of the Gaddafi family to not stand down, as had done Mubarek in Egypt. When pressed with the issue of the military bombing their own citizens in the East, Saif responded: ”I can not take a tank, and tell the Libyan people, this is the way to democracy and freedom”.

At one point, Saif said his family had to “change our country”, with “democracy, constitution, local government, new laws…” – a development that Saif said made people laugh at him when he first put these ideas forward 10 years ago.

No doubt the ICC will take Saif’s thesis as evidence when he fronts, as is expected, the court in the coming months. If you are so inclined, contribute to the crowd-sourcing investigation into the extent of plagariasm in Saif’s thesis here.

Further reading: 

‘The Accomplice‘, by Phillipe Sands, Esquire, 26 October 2011.

The role of civil society in the democratisation of global governance institutions: From “soft power” to collective decision-making?, thesis submitted in fulfilment of a doctorate at the London School of Economics, by Saif Gaddafi, September 2008.