STUDY PEACE AND SECURITY Coercion, predation and state formation in Libya and Iraq Parallel perspectives Wolfram Lacher and Salam Said(eds.) March 2025 In Iraq since 2003 as in Libya since 2011, no single actor has succeeded in consolidating power. Instead, state formation occurs through negotiated power-sharing arrangements among the competing actors State formation in Iraq and Libya challenges analytical categories that are often taken for granted, such as the divide between state and non-state armed actors. In both countries, the boundaries between these two types of actors have been blurred Close links between coercion and predation make it difficult to distinguish between the do­mains of politics, the economy and security. In both states, relevant actors straddle all three spheres; in neither is there a distinct«security sector»