Filling Out Iraq’s Federation: A Bottom-Up Approach to Challenging the Muhasasa

Abstract

The consensus among many western scholars and the Iraqi protest movement is that almost all of the country’s most serious problems are attributable to a political system (the so-called muhasasa ta’ifia) that allocates positions of political power on the basis of ethnicity and sect. The system was created by elites, and is sustained and manipulated by these same elites for personal gain; but while critiques of the system are ubiquitous, feasible proposals for changing it are thin on the ground. The assumption that the muhasasa is a top-down imposition logically leads protestors to focus attention on effecting change in Baghdad, but direct challenges to the system are unlikely to succeed. The argument here is that a bottom-up approach that starts with empowering governorates is the more viable strategy. Specifically, the focus should be on exploiting the constitutional provision that allows governorates to transition to regions. While a ‘filled out’ federation may not end the muhasasa, it will erode the system’s foundation by distributing power and resources away from Baghdad.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These have been articulated at length by critics of the consociational approach, with the main bone of contention being that institutionalizing societal divisions, particularly those based on ethnicity, serves to sharpen identities, thereby hardening and deepening these divisions. As such, the choice of group-based power sharing institutions exacerbates the very problem it is supposed to alleviate.

2 On the issue of corruption in post-war Iraq, see, for example, Sawaan (2012); Sassoon (2016); Abdullah (2019); (Dodge & Mansour, 2021).

3 However, Dodge is not entirely consistent in this. In other work written contemporaneously (Dodge 2020a; 2020b), Dodge continues to describe the muhasasa as an ‘ethno-sectarian consociational political system.’

4 This term is taken from McCulloch and McEvoy (2020).

5 For details on this distinction, see McCulloch (2014); and, in the specific context of Iraq, McGarry and O’Leary (2007).

6 Opponents of Muqtada al-Sadr’s efforts to form a majoritarian government appear to have found a loophole to this in the form of Article 70 (1) of the constitution, which requires an initial effort to gain a 2/3 majority vote in parliament to elect a new president. This has been interpreted by Iraq’s Supreme Court as requiring a parliamentary quorum of at least 2/3 to stage the vote, and opponents were able to deny this on three occasions via a boycott.

7 There were various changes to the PR system over time, the most important of which were a shift from closed to open list, and a change from a single, nationwide district to the use of governorates as districts. For a review of these changes and how they affected politics in Iraq, see O'Sullivan and al-Saiedi (2014).

8 The system has only been used for any length of time in Japan and Taiwan.

9 SNTV requires parties to make strategic calculations about now many candidates to field in any given district. This tends to favor that are well-organized, well-resourced, and well-versed in voter mobilization, which tends to be the larger parties. The mathematics of SNTV also tends to gift a seat ‘bonus’ to the winning party.

10 For a succinct summary of the properties of electoral systems, see Blais (1991).

11 Space does not permit a detailed treatment of this complex issue, but given the structure of Iraq’s economy (i.e. the almost total lack of a manufacturing or industrial base outside the oil sector) and the fact that the majority of Iraq’s salaried workforce is employed in the public sector, the raw materials for the emergence of a two-party system based on a socioeconomic cleavage are not present.

12 Not considered here are preferential voting systems, such as the Alternative Vote (AV) that allow voters to rank-order candidates. According to advocates, AV promote moderation in candidates’ platforms in the context of deeply divided societies. In order to do this, however, AV requires electoral districts that are ethnically heterogenous, and this would be extremely challenging in the context of Iraq.

13 Law 21, as enacted in 2008, and amended in 2011, 2013, and 2018, was intended to kickstart the decentralization process, but made no progress under al-Maliki. Despite a sincere effort from PM Al-Abadi to accelerate decentralization, the process had ground to a complete halt within a couple of years. For a detailed analysis, see Fleet (2019).

14 For example, the allocation of money to governorates is supposed to be done on the basis of population, plus extra money for oil-producing governorates. However, Iraq’s budget for 2021 allocated more money to each of the nine governorates south of Baghdad than it did to Ninewa, the country’s second most populous province. Dhi Qar, meanwhile, received the third largest allocation (after Kurdistan and Baghdad). Not coincidentally, Dhi Qar had been at the epicenter of the protest movement for the preceding year.

15 On this, see Fleet (2019).

16 The ‘new’ Court is basically the same Court established by law in 2005, but with nine new members. This was accomplished by amending the 2005 law, rather than by following the procedure detailed in Article 92 of the constitution. This was a politically expedient move because the fully-staffed Court was needed to certify the results of early elections, and amendments to new laws can be passed by simple majority rather than the two-thirds vote required by Article 92. Whether this new iteration of the Court is on firmer ground constitutionally is an open question.

17 O’Driscoll (2015), for example, argues strongly for the creation of a single Sunni region, to be guarded by a Sunni army.

18 Detailed and insightful treatments of the political disunity among Sunnis include The International Crisis Group (2013), Mansour (2016), and Sowell (2020).

19 Basra agitated for separation from the rest of Iraq for most of the 1920s. Importantly, the movement was non-sectarian in intent and was backed by elites of all ethnicities and sects. It ultimately failed largely due to the lack of support at the mass level. For a detailed treatment of Basra’s separatist quest, see Visser (2005).

20 Quoted in Isakhan and Mulherin (2018, p. 273).

21 Unlike the production sharing agreements signed with foreign oil companies by the KRG, under which a portion of the oil or gas extracted becomes the property of the company, workers in Basra’s oil industry have always campaigned to keep Iraq’s oil in Iraqi hands. To this end, workers formed the first post-Saddam union in Iraq, the Southern Oil Company Union, which went on to become the major component of the powerful Iraqi Federation of Oil Workers’ Unions. In other words, Basra has always adopted a staunchly nationalistic line with regard to control over Iraq’s oil sector. For details, see Isakhan (2014).

22 The most important of these is that most of these findings relate to decentralization, rather than federalism per se. The two concepts are similar in practice, but sub units in a federation enjoy constitutional protection, while decentralization can be revoked at any time by the central government. It is also possible for a unitary state to be highly decentralized (e,g, Denmark), while a federal state can be highly centralized (e.g. Malaysia).

23 A notable exception here is Visser and Stansfield (2008).

24 The process of decentralization in Spain produced very similar effects. Some autonomous communities, La Rioja, for example, had no discernable shared history, but within fifteen years of its creation, surveys indicated that more than 80 percent of respondents from La Rioja claimed to identify equally with Spain and their region - the highest percentage in Spain (Beremendi and Máiz, 2004, p. 145).