ABSTRACT
The Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) in the early days of the revolution focused on two goals, consolidation of its revolutionary authority and the socioeconomic and political modernization of the country. The coup d'etat on September 1969 surprised few observers as the overthrow of the monarchy had been anticipated for months. The only surprise came in the executors of the coup as no one anticipated a bold stroke by a group of junior army officers intent on conducting a broad socioeconomic and political revolution. The RCC canceled the 7 October 1951 constitution, issuing a temporary constitutional proclamation that gave legal expression to central elements of Qaddafi's nascent ideology. Qaddafi had begun to give the tenets of his revolutionary approach a theoretical underpinning in what came to be known as the Third Universal Theory. As Qaddafi continued to refine the political system, the regime introduced a series of increasingly radical socioeconomic reforms grounded in the theories found in The Green Book.
