Will Anyone Publish Saif Gaddafi’s Book on Civil Society?

Will Anyone Publish Saif Gaddafi’s Book on Civil Society?

We already knew that Muammar scion Saif Gaddafi had written a dissertation at LSE entitled “The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions: From Soft Power to Collective Decision Making?” But I didn’t know that it was slated to be published by Oxford University Press.  This at HuffPo from Ben Barber (who, ahem, knows something about the Gaddafis):

If the father is deposed, there is little chance the son can go back to being a reformer and human rights advocate. And Oxford University Press, which contracted to publish the two extraordinary books Saif wrote on civil society and democratic reform in the developing world, will presumably now cancel publication.

Barber is probably correct in predicting that Oxford will back down from publication.  But is that necessarily the right decision?  The junior Gaddafi’s study sounds pretty useful to anyone interested in nonstate actors.  It’s not every academic study that has The Monitor Group on board crunching the data!  Although Oxford could no longer count on a large bulk sale, it would surely sell better than average for its list. I suppose the study’s credibility is undermined by the recent posture of the its author. Perhaps the bigger problem is that Seif may not have a lot of time to do copy edits (on the other hand, maybe he will).

UPDATE:  Mother Jones has linked to the full text of the dissertation here.  Leaving aside the dubious provenance, from a quick scan it looks pretty interesting.  But would you cite it?

FURTHER UPDATE:  Apparently the dissertation includes plagiarized passages.

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[…] or venality? The involvement of David Held and the LSE has been much discussed this week, via Saif Gaddafi’s PhD, and an optimistic  commentary by Anthony Giddens in 2007 unearthed. Rather more interesting […]

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[…] of due process for the listed persons. Will the Gaddafis, led perhaps by LSE-PhD holding Saif (who may or may not had plagiarized his PhD on human rights and global governance), follow the bright example of the late Saddam Hussein and file an application with the European […]

M. Gross
M. Gross

Am I wrong to laugh at the plagiarism?  Because I find it darkly hilarious.  Extra points if it gets brought up in his eventual ICC trial.