The Green Book , Part I: The Solution of the Problem of Democracy (The Authority of the People)

Overview
Part I of The Green Book, titled "The Solution of the Problem of Democracy (The Authority of the People)," sets out a systematic challenge to representative parliamentary systems and political parties while proposing an alternative model of direct popular rule. The text argues that modern democracy as practiced through elected officials and party politics is a betrayal of genuine popular sovereignty, and presents a program of institutions intended to return political authority directly to ordinary citizens.

Core thesis
The central claim is that sovereignty belongs inherently to the people and cannot legitimately be delegated to representatives or monopolized by political factions. Gaddafi rejects the idea that politicians or parliaments can stand in for the people; he contends that such delegation creates a permanent political class whose interests diverge from those of the populace. True democracy, as he frames it, requires mechanisms that allow continuous, active participation by citizens in governance rather than intermittent, symbolic voting.

Institutions proposed
To realize that ideal, the book prescribes a network of "people's congresses" and "people's committees" as the basic units of decision-making. Local popular congresses are envisioned as assemblies in which inhabitants directly debate and decide policies affecting their communities, and they elect executive committees to administer and implement those decisions under tight accountability and recall. National congresses would aggregate local decisions and coordinate broader policy, while executive bodies would be subordinate and revocable. The design emphasizes face-to-face deliberation, immediate accountability, and the elimination of intermediaries that could act independently of the electorate.

Rejection of parties and elections
A major strand of the argument is a systematic denunciation of political parties and competitive elections. Parties are portrayed as engines of division that organize society into rival blocs and convert public service into power struggles. Elections, in Gaddafi's account, are ritualized transfers of authority that institutionalize delegation and enable elites to claim legitimacy while insulating them from ongoing public control. He argues for replacing party competition with a pluralistic but nonpartisan system of local assemblies where citizen participation and consensus practices supplant party institutions.

Philosophical and political context
The book draws on a blend of populist, anti-colonial and egalitarian rhetoric, presenting its program as a third way distinct from both Western parliamentary liberalism and Soviet-style party rule. It situates the Jamahiriya concept, the "state of the masses", as an attempt to ground sovereignty in social and economic life rather than in bureaucratic or military elites. Emphasis is placed on moral arguments about equality, civic responsibility and the corrupting effects of concentrated political power.

Critiques and implications
While the model promises maximal citizen control, critics have pointed to practical and theoretical weaknesses: the difficulty of organizing large-scale deliberation, the potential for informal hierarchies within congresses and committees, and the risk that nominal direct democracy can mask centralized or authoritarian decision-making. In practice, experiments with these institutions in Libya became tightly controlled by the central leadership, raising questions about how easily the theoretical safeguards against delegation and elite capture can be enforced. Nonetheless, Part I of The Green Book remains a significant statement of anti-representative democratic thought, notable for its insistence that political legitimacy derives from continual popular authority rather than intermittent electoral mandates.