Rami Mustafah
When US Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack observed at the annual IISS conference that “everywhere a monarchy existed, there was stability,” he offered an oft-overlooked structural diagnosis. His deeper point — that regional order endured “since Ottoman times” — was a recognition of political continuity as a stabilising mechanism rather than a vulnerability. His comment touched on an enduring truth: systems collapse not only when they fail, but when no institution remains strong enough to stand above the struggle for power itself.
Libya today exemplifies that axiom. Almost 15 years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, the country hosts multiple competing governments, has held numerous elections, and has been the subject of successive negotiated roadmaps — each aligned to the interests of a different external backer. Yet one essential component of sustainable statehood remains absent: a mutually recognised source of ultimate political legitimacy. Libya’s crisis is not merely a contest for power between rival actors; it is a contest over the very arena in which power is permitted to be contested.
Between 1951 and 1969, Libya’s political landscape was markedly different. The country was governed under a constitutional monarchy, led by King Idris al-Senussi. That system possessed a crucial attribute that no post-2011 framework has successfully replicated: it insulated sovereignty from factional competition, rather than making it the prize of factional victory. As a constitutional monarch, King Idris stood outside politics not through authoritarian domination, but by institutional design. The monarchy acted as a unifying framework that allowed tribal, regional and political pluralism to coexist without requiring the permanent defeat of rival factions.
Pan-Arab revolutionary politics ultimately brought the monarchy to an end — not through democratic succession, but by coup. Gaddafi’s 1969 seizure of power was part of a broader ideological upheaval shaped by Cold War rivalries that placed little value on institutional continuity. As Ambassador Barrack’s remarks suggest, the institutions that had underwritten stability for generations were not dismantled because they lacked legitimacy, but because they stood in the path of a larger geopolitical project.
The consequences of that rupture now define Libya’s political landscape. Today’s rival administrations compete to position themselves as the sole legitimate authority. The removal of the one institution historically capable of anchoring national unity — the monarchy — remains one of the most consequential destabilising events in Libya’s modern history.
Against this backdrop, Crown Prince Mohammed El-Hassan El-Rida El-Senussi has re-emerged in national discourse. His role is often mischaracterised as symbolic or nostalgic, yet the case for constitutional restoration is neither sentimental nor cosmetic — it is legal and institutional. He represents the last uncontested constitutional framework Libya has known: the 1951 Independence Constitution, the only foundational national compact in Libya’s modern history not forged through division or coercion.
Growing interest in constitutional restoration, including endorsements from members of the High Council of State, reflects an institutional argument rather than a monarchist one. For stability to take hold, at least one pillar of the state must exist beyond the arena of competition — an institution rivals do not contest, because it is the framework through which contestation is made possible.
This is the essence of Barrack’s point. Stability is not produced by elections alone, nor by transitional frameworks or externally negotiated blueprints. It emerges when a political system possesses a “sovereign constant” — an authority that predates governments and does not change hands when governments do. In many states, monarchy historically fulfilled this role, not due to the innate qualities of monarchs, but because the institution created a non-zero-sum centre of gravity around which politics revolved, rather than collided.
Libya is far from alone in learning this lesson through rupture. Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran all once possessed comparable unifying institutions before decades of revolution, war, fragmentation and proxy competition. In each case, the abolition of the monarchy did not produce consensus — it created a vacuum in which contestation became perpetual. The pattern is empirical, not ideological: states unravel not simply when old orders fall, but when no successor institution commands recognised legitimacy in their place.
None of this guarantees that constitutional restoration would be easy or sufficient. It would not, in itself, demobilise armed groups, resolve security dilemmas, rebuild institutions or unify fractured economic networks. But it would address a more fundamental deficit — one peace processes repeatedly fail to confront — by restoring a legitimate centre that need not defeat any rival in order to exist.
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Rami Mustafah is a Saudi analyst focused on North African geopolitics and regional security. He holds a degree in International Relations from King Saud University, where he specialised in security studies and transnational risk.
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