The Genesis of the Democratic Road

The road to the envisioned utopia of a consolidated democracy began in earnest with the swift defeat of Saddam's much-vaunted army in 2003. The Bush administration and its allies in Britain and elsewhere had endeavored to legitimize their action against Saddam's Iraq on the premise that the country's malevolent and unpredictable dictator possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), which allegedly constituted a real and present danger to the United States, to its allies in the Middle Eastern region, and to Western democracies in general. Such was the emphasis on this particular purpose that other articulated goals for the war against Iraq went almost unnoticed, and if they did come up they were treated simply as auxiliary, even marginal, to the heart of the matter—the elimination of WMDs. As Duffield and Dombrowski remind us in the concluding chapter of Balance Sheet, the Bush administration, a good seven months before coalition troops entered Iraq, had publicly pronounced democratic transformation in Iraq as an American objective, declaring that the forcible removal of Saddam would open the way for converting Iraq into a country that was “democratic and pluralistic, a nation where the human rights of every ethnic and religious group are recognized and protected” (p. 165). And once Iraq was successfully democratized, it would become the catalyst for a broader democratization movement in other authoritarian lands of the Arab region (p. 70). It is not clear on what bases the Bush administration made these optimistic claims; and its later policies after 2003 would suggest a dearth of wisdom and a shortage of knowledge of Iraq among those members of the policymaking elite who argued fervently for war and for the inevitability of democratic transition.

At the very outset there was, after all, the contested question of democratic imposition. Could democratic attitudes be implanted and democratic structures built by an invading outside power? In Constitution Making Under Occupation, Arato provides a reasoned response that encapsulates the heated debate that surrounded the issue. On the one hand, he points out that external imposition can be said to have an advantage, “in that an external occupier and monitor not only can remove the forces of the old regime, but can also block the efforts of newly mobilized actors to impose nondemocratic solutions.” However, such projects' main, and at times fatal, deficit is the lack of legality and legitimacy, which turns “liberators” inevitably into “occupiers.” Even indigenous political elites that rise to political power during this period could “suffer from this legitimacy problem” (pp. 9–15).

This was the dilemma faced by the American-instituted Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). It was compounded by a further predicament, or as Munson puts it in Iraq in Transition, a “delicate situation”: While the CPA-desired elections needed lengthy preparations, the CPA also wished to move rapidly to build a strong state (p. 173). Similarly, Arato concludes that the CPA was caught between two desired objectives that were not necessarily compatible: effectiveness and legitimacy. The former had to do with generating outcomes that required the utilization and centralization of maximum powers; the latter demanded the gradual empowerment of Iraqi actors in its widest possible form. The inherent contradiction meant that “authoritarian measures had to be given democratic window dressing” (Constitution Making, p. 18). And Iraqis were not blind to these contradictions, which they increasingly labeled as American hypocrisy.

A few years into the occupation, when Iraq experienced bloody insurrections, communal conflicts, and gross violations of human rights, rather than democratic peace and stability, those who argued that democracy could not be imposed from the outside felt vindicated. However, that is anything but a sophisticated conclusion, based as it is on a single-factor analysis. Other, widely cited prognostications of the seeming failure of democratic transition were based on factors that were indigenous to the country. These pertained to the supposed absence of democratic traditions and practices in Iraqi history and to the country's ethno-sectarian schisms, deemed to be so deep as to preclude democratic practices. But does all this mean that assumptions of the viability of democratic change in Iraq are necessarily flawed? Well, if we learn anything from analyzing political phenomenon, it is that there are few simple and unambiguous answers.

Democracy and its Requisites

In a seminal work published half a century ago, the late Seymour Martin Lipset argued that the higher the levels of industrialization, urbanization, wealth, and education—which are concomitant with the development of a vibrant, entrepreneurial middle class—the higher the chances of a successful transition to democracy.Footnote ² While Lipset's thesis has been challenged and modified by others,Footnote ³ it still offers compelling avenues of analysis in the case of Iraq.

The fractured development of Iraq both as a state and society, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, with the intrusion of the military in politics, followed by the suffocating brutality of the Saddam era, did retard the development of Lipset's requisites. Industrialization moved at a snail's pace and, particularly in the petrochemical field, would be devastated by Saddam's wars against Iran and over Kuwait. Urbanization and education did expand throughout the development of the state, but on the whole, urbanization simply meant the growth of shantytowns of illiterate, economically and socially disadvantaged people whose culture was hardly different from their rural counterparts. The expansion of education was one of the more impressive achievements of Iraq's successive regimes, but it too would suffer the impact of Saddam's wars and the international sanctions regime.

A middle class continued to gain in strength, reaching a pinnacle in material prosperity in the 1970s. But with the Iraq–Iran war, followed by the first Gulf war and the crippling economic sanctions, the middle class was literally decimated by the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. What ensued, in Munson's words, was “a middle class that was gutted and replaced by a poorly educated and ruthless class of opportunists…. The one sector that many hoped would unify Iraq had been all but destroyed” (Iraq in Transition, p. 40). And in any case, much of Iraq's middle class was directly dependent on the state, primarily through employment in the vast bureaucracy, in state-owned industries, in military and security agencies, and during the 35 years of Saddam's rule in the countless political, social and security bureaus of the Ba'ath Party, Saddam's own mobilizational political institution. Moreover, thanks to the country's immense oil wealth, government revenues came mainly from oil sales and not taxation, which further added to middle class docility.Footnote ⁴ All this hardly would add up to the notion of an independent, entrepreneurial, and self-sustaining middle class, which democratic theory holds to be the basis for democratic civil life.

Political culture is another requisite that impacts the successful transition to democracy. The concept refers to peoples' national historical experience and belief system, and the way these tend to influence political behavior.Footnote ⁵ The question that was debated about Iraq was whether the country had a political culture that was conducive to the growth of democracy. In fact, there could not be a definitive, cut-and-dried answer to this question. Initially, analysts seemed almost unanimous in concluding that the chances for democracy to be implanted in the political and psychological fabric of Iraqi society were too dim to warrant even trying. The culprit was the country's lack of a democratic tradition and the absence of previous experience with democracy.Footnote ⁶ Indeed, even as Bush administration officials talked ebulliently about exporting democracy to Iraq and from there to the Middle East, governmental analyses were far less sanguine.Footnote ⁷ But there was also a countervailing point of view that stressed the periodic instances of democratic practices in the history of the Iraqi state, particularly during the 1921–58 monarchical era,Footnote ⁸ during which the opposition opposed, the press criticized, and judges more often than not adjudicated independently of governmental wishes.

This is important to note because historical recollection is neither linear nor cumulative. Narratives that at one time are forcefully asserted can be forgotten and later rediscovered.Footnote ⁹ In the realm of politics, historical memory is often the subject of reinterpretation by those searching for a “usable past” to legitimize public policy.Footnote ¹⁰ So while not the dominant feature of Iraqi history, these intermittent rays of democratic hope could be utilized by those in charge of the new Iraqi project to build democratic structures.

Ranged against this optimism, it must be said, was the stark fact of 50 years of continuous authoritarianism, capped by Saddam's procrustean totalitarianism over the 35 years of his rule, where, Munson tells us, “not even private family discussions were safe from surveillance,” and where supposedly scholarly historical research was directed to “dredge up new convenient facts … that supported Saddam's rule” (Iraq in Transition, p. 34). The multiple generations that had experienced nothing but such political and cultural tyranny would provide the “raw data” for Western analysts, who would dismiss even the possibility of a successful democratic transformation in Iraq.

So what we glean from Iraqi history is an authoritarian experience punctuated by instances of democratic practices, and this historical complexity was reflected in the response of Iraqi citizens to the idea of democracy after 2003. One can almost characterize the two elections of 2005 as electoral schizophrenia. On the one hand, there was great enthusiasm among people to exercise rights that had been denied them for almost half a century, and amid pervasive violence they flocked to the voting booths. On the other hand, once inside the booth, they reverted to primordial ethno-sectarian loyalties, seemingly using democracy as one of a number of means (not all peaceful) simply to advance the cause of their own group, and hopefully give it dominion over the other groups. What transpired was a complex and somewhat undetermined conclusion in which the existence and functioning of democratic institutions would inspire hope, but the narrow interests and partisanship that came to pervade the workings of these institutions could only engender consternation.

Almost five years later in the 2010 elections, the Iraqi voters could be said to have made undeniable advances in asserting their voice. They exhibited an independent streak in their choices; they punished incompetence and corruption by dismissing 80% of sitting parliamentarians, and they opted for merit rather than blind primordial loyalties. Could it be that Iraqis today are emulating an earlier generation in claiming fundamental rights that had been denied them for 50 years, and if so, how resilient is this apparent learning process? Again, there is no definitive answer, but this analysis points to a more complex set of factors pertaining to political culture that need to be considered in determining the possibility of democratic transition and consolidation in Iraq.

American Efforts (or Blunders?)

Even if Iraq's history and its political culture were not the fatal potholes on the road to democracy that they originally had been made out by many to be, the immediate post-2003 conditions posed steep hurdles to democratic transition that became almost insurmountable. When a totalitarian government—which over 35 years had entrenched its tentacles in every corner and avenue of Iraqi life—disintegrates totally in three short weeks, the entire state structures it built and maintained disappear with it: Institutions cease to function, economic activity grinds to a halt, and everyone waits for the new directives and fresh direction. In a September 2003 interview, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell confided that an “unanticipated aspect of the post war occupation was the extent to which the entire structure of military and civil society collapsed so completely as the war ended, leaving a vast problem for the American troops to handle.”Footnote ¹¹ That it took the CPA, the new occupying administration, months to come to grips with the reality of a turbulent post-Saddam Iraq only compounded the rapidly deteriorating political and security environment. The new masters, strangely unschooled in the complexities of the land over which they now held dominion, and torn (as we have seen) between “effectiveness” and “legitimacy,” seemed set on making one inept policy decision after another. Of these, the two most damaging decisions were taken in the early days of the occupation: the dissolution of Iraq's armed forces and the banning of members of the Ba'ath Party from public life.

The point is not that these two institutions should have been allowed to carry on “business as usual.” By any measure, Saddam's bloated army was the mainstay of his coercive rule, and the Ba'ath Party functioned as an instrument of intimidation to dragoon Iraqi society into line behind the hero-president. The Americans were not amiss in thinking that Iraqis would be better off without such predatory entities in their midst. The consequential error lay in the timing. The Americans forgot to ask themselves what it might mean to turn thousands of military officers loose on the streets without at first even the promise of monetary compensation. Similarly, to proscribe all Ba'athists without exception from taking part in refashioning Iraq was to exclude most of the very Iraqi professionals whose crucial services would be needed in rebuilding the country. Given the ideological decay that permeated the party in the 1990s, the bulk of the rank and file were nominal members at best, whose party cards simply meant better job prospects. These were not the human rights violators and active Saddamists who, without doubt, should have been dismissed and prosecuted.

Many members of the military and the party came from the Sunni tribes that inhabit the central areas of Iraq, to the north and northwest of Baghdad. Without a position in society and lacking even the means to provide for their families, ex-Ba'athists and army officers joined in a tactical alliance with foreign Islamist fighters in mounting an ever-widening and violent insurrection that not only claimed the lives of many American troops but also undermined the efforts of the CPA to build new democratically laden state structures.

Although the CPA's efforts to recreate an Iraq in its own image were disrupted, they were by no means abandoned or even frozen. The CPA created an Iraqi governing council, which became the precursor of the Iraqi government to which the CPA handed the reins of power in June 2004. The CPA also began the difficult task of building a completely new army, as well as a new bureaucracy and judiciary. But most important, the CPA embarked on a project to draft a transitional constitution that would cement democratic ideas and practices in Iraq.

Constitutional Federalism

From the very beginning of the process, it was abundantly clear that while issues such as the role of Islam, minority rights, status law provisions, the independence of the judiciary, and so forth were of critical importance, the one issue where daggers would be drawn and where the future of Iraq would be determined was the incendiary question of federalism. Not that the American occupiers and the Iraqi political elite of the time objected to federalism; there was general recognition that post-Saddam Iraq needed to adopt a system of government that would take it far away from Saddam's procrustean centralism.

It was also feared that the emergence of ethno-sectarian solidarities, and the antagonisms that this was bound to provoke, would more than likely lead to one of two unpalatable eventualities: political disintegration at one extreme or some variant of authoritarian rule at the other. However, a contrary argument was made that the innate interest of each community to limit the power of the others could provide the political checks and balances that would lead to the promotion of democracy at the expense of rigid communal particularisms. From the very beginning of the effort to build a democratic Iraq, there was almost universal consensus that transforming Iraq's communal diversity from a dislocative force to an agent of positive change would be achieved best through a federal political structure. Federalism, after all, is ideal for fractured societies as it cuts across cleavages and conflicts, reduces inequalities among groups, and gives all parties a stake in the system.Footnote ¹² But the question was what kind of federalism.

One model envisioned a system that would be decentralized on the basis of territory, not ethnicity or sect, where local governments would have responsibility for all citizens in their areas, not just for ethnic or sectarian conationals.Footnote ¹³ The recommendation was to maintain Iraq's administrative structure under Saddam, in which the country was divided into 18 units, but to give these units far greater powers vis-à-vis the center. Keeping these provincial boundaries would serve the interests of Iraq's various communities, while avoiding inordinate emphasis on conflict-inducing ethnic and sectarian concerns. Such an arrangement would also increase healthy political competition for resources among the various units—even among those that reside within specific ethnic or sectarian areas.

As it turned out, the Americans and the Arab members of the drafting committee favored this approach,Footnote ¹⁴ which, at least to this author, would have been the most appropriate way to promote the development of a stable and democratic Iraq. But the Kurds were adamantly against it. Arato, in detailing the tribulations of endeavoring to draft a democratic constitution in a country torn by strife due to differences over political identity, gives a vivid account of subsequent events. (Constitution Making, pp. 155–63). As the drafting committee produced a version that seemed to endorse territoriality, Kurdish leaders produced counterproposals that involved an ethnically federated Iraq, in which areas populated by Kurds (including the disputed Kirkuk) would form an autonomous region called Kurdistan that would have its own government, which in turn would have a high degree of control over the region's security and resources, to say nothing of its right of “nullifying … federal laws in all but a few enumerated areas” (p. 163). When the constitutional document, known as the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), was finally agreed on, the sections on federalism represented the bulk of what the Kurds had demanded. The Kurds had been relentless in their determination to push through their version of federalism because, as Arato surmises, they “rightly recognized that [TAL] would help create or legitimate facts on the ground that would be very difficult to reverse later in a permanent constitution” (p. 158).

When the Iraqi constitution was drafted in 2005, this time by Iraqis alone after the first general elections, the TAL indeed would constitute the basis for the new document. In fact, the Kurds were able to get even more concessions from the other Iraqis. O'Leary—whose How to Get Out of Iraq with Integrity is a vigorous prescription of a loosely federated Iraq—outlines the constitutional elements of Kurdistan's autonomy (p. 20):

Most controversial and divisive was the economic dimension of the constitutional bargain over federalism. Again a shift in the balance of power to the regions, along the lines envisioned by Kurdish leaders, was discernible. As O'Leary tells us, the constitution gave the regions the power to devise investment and exploration strategies, as well as control over all unexploited fields of oil and gas, with no requirement to distribute benefits to other regions or to the federal center (pp. 129–30). O'Leary not only defends these arrangements but also enjoins Washington to endorse them (p. 133). Munson and Arato disagree. The former sees them as likely to cause hostilities (Iraq in Transition, p. 186), and Arato expects “nothing but contested jurisdictions, chaos, and disorganization deeply undermining the financial capacities of the Iraqi state for a long time to come” (Constitution Making, p. 236).

Significantly, these political, security, and economic powers were extended in the 2005 constitution to other parts of Iraq: All provinces could, if they so wished, join to create larger regions with powers to those accorded the Kurds. This was the Kurds' doing and their very own victory. O'Leary, strongly sympathetic to the Kurdish case, applauds this development (How to Get Out, pp. 20, 118–23, 190). Arato, on the other hand, deems much of the federalism section in the constitutional document to be untenable, seeing it as resulting from “private dealings with the Kurds” (Constitution Making, p. 256). Regardless, in the end what won the day was a federalism based not on the territorial boundaries of existing provinces but on wholesale ethno-sectarian considerations. It is hardly surprising that so far, Iraq's parliament has found it grossly unpalatable to even vote on the constitutional document.

In retrospect, it may be that territorial federalism had little actual chance of being implemented, given the country's historical experiences and its sociopolitical conditions. The Iraqi state has historically been characterized by muscular central governance, where the various parts were tied umbilically to the capital, Baghdad. The state was the center that possessed power and controlled resources, and provincial government had little role beyond facilitating central jurisdiction. This situation left its imprint on peoples' psyche, making devolution of power to the 18 provinces seem irrelevant, even fraudulent, to many ordinary Iraqis

If one historical experience could have broken this mold of power centralization, it would have been the post-1991 period, when Saddam's regime threw all pretence of secularism and meritocracy to the wind, pursuing instead, with untold savagery, blatant ethno-sectarian assaults against the Kurds and Shi'ites. While in the post-2003 period the Shi'ites would form a majority and would realistically hope to climb the ladder of political power, no such promise was held for the Kurds, who were still very much a minority, separated from the rest of Iraqis by a deep cultural and linguistic divide. In such circumstance, it should not have come as a surprise that the only federal form acceptable to the Kurdish community would be the one embracing ethnic lines. Territoriality thus fell into the crack between the two political structures that people, through their past experiences, understood and were willing to accept: a centralized system, on the one hand, or devolution based on ethno-sectarianism, on the other.

Stateness and Democracy

For the purpose of democratic development and postauthoritarian peace and conciliation, constitutional engineering alone has obvious limits. Constitutions set rules and parameters within which state institutions function. But it is the responsibility of these institutions to discharge their duties within constitutional imperatives. Simply put, the state has to deliver, and in order for this to happen, it needs to be seen as authoritative—able to protect citizens' lives, rights, and liberties.

In addition to all the obstacles to the introduction of democracy through constitutional design discussed previously, a further obstacle to this project was the extent to which the state was coming under increasingly virulent attack by predatory substate groups. During this period, not only were state institutions unable to deliver the most basic services to the citizens but, more ominously, the state as a whole was also not capable of projecting power within its borders. Between 2004 and 2007, Iraq exhibited many of the characteristics of a failed state.

Could democratic institutions be built in a country where state structures were failing? Indeed, could the introduction of democracy solidify the state, or was a robust state needed for democracy to succeed? Munson characterizes this as “the chicken-or-egg debate,” where the question concerned which should come first, security or political development (Iraq in Transition, p. 164). It is interesting to note that the military commanders seemed to push for accelerating the “governance track,” whereas the civilian, Paul Bremer, thought that the security situation needed to be dealt with first (p. 164). Arato looks at this from a slightly different angle. He argues that

Munson's and Arato's arguments reflect a wider debate in the literature on democratic transitions about the relationship of democracy to state building, particularly in divided societies like Iraq. Earlier studies of democratic transitions focused primarily on regime change, paying little to no attention to competing identities within the body politic. Perhaps because their focus was on Europe and Latin America,Footnote ¹⁵ questions of vertical segmentation along ethnic or religious lines were not particularly salient. However, the question of “stateness” emerged in the 1990s with the transitions that materialized in the wake of communism's collapse and as a result of political developments in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Many of the countries in these regions had divided societies and multiple loyalties.

So the question was whether democracy could be introduced, and whether it could function and prosper, in a country where the state does not have a monopoly over the legitimate use of force, the ability to impose taxes or provide services, or significant portions of its population willing to accept its authority.Footnote ¹⁶ In other words, could one talk about a state transitioning to democracy if that state did not execute the functions associated with the state? These were particularly relevant questions in the case of Iraq where in the post-2003 era, the state and its institutions seemed not just impotent in executing its responsibilities but, for long periods, almost invisible.

From early on, Iraq's fledgling political order would come under a concerted two-pronged assault that would create the worst conditions of instability since the fall of Saddam. As early as the summer of 2004, it had become evident that the area north and west of Baghdad had become the center of a virulent Sunni Arab insurrection and the headquarters of the foreign jihadists. Meanwhile the southern part of the country was hostage to an array of Shi'ite armed groups and militia, most notable of which was Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

These armed groups, which conducted their predatory business with seeming carefree abandon, were able to intimidate not just the long-suffering population but also the country's security forces, or, to be more precise, what passed for the country's security forces. Until well into 2008, Iraq's police force and army did not have the capacity to impose their dominion on the armed groups and militia. It was not just the lack of numbers, training, or equipment; it was also the absence of legitimacy. The biggest culprits were the police and other Ministry of Interior forces, which did not command the trust of the people. The result of all this is that the state was perceived as impotent in discharging its most basic function, that of providing security, and that impotence was bound to produce immense and debilitating shortcomings in its other political and socioeconomic functions. And in such circumstance, what incentive would people have to stick with this failed agency?

During those years, Iraq may have had a government but it lacked governance. Ministries under the control of various militias became fiefdoms of warlords, negating any notion of collective cabinet responsibility. Law and order became a variable phrase to be defined in accordance with the whim of some malevolent jihadist, greedy politician, or radical cleric. All this was to be compounded in 2006–7 by a full-fledged civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites that, in addition to the willful and gratuitous murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to the internal and external displacement of no fewer than 4.5 million people. By the end of 2007, the authority of the government and its prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, had sunk to a level that verged on irrelevance. Maliki in particular was criticized for being weak and ineffectual, and for being beholden to powerful Shiite leaders and groups, on whose support his position depended.

Whether it was the specter of the looming 2009 provincial and 2010 general elections or the calculation that substate predatory groups had lost support among the populace, Maliki in the spring of 2008 decided it was time to assert the authority of the state. The American efforts to lure the Sunni tribes away from the foreign jihadists, combined with the “surge” in American troop levels, had proved largely successful, leaving the Shiite Mahdi Army, which controlled a number of southern Shi'ite cities as well as Sadr City in Baghdad, as the primary challenger to state authority.

In late spring of 2008, Iraqi security forces, supported by American and British air power, launched a massive assault on the Mahdi Army in the south, and by May had succeeded in imposing the authority of the state and establishing a measure of normalcy. Later that month, after repeated clashes with the Mahdi Army, more than 10,000 Iraqi troops entered Sadr City in Baghdad and quickly deployed throughout its neighborhoods, ushering in a period of calm in the troubled area not experienced since 2003. The welcome assertive stance of the state's security forces, and the consequent decline of violence in the Sunni and Shi'ite areas of Iraq over the next two years, would auger well for the coming elections in 2009 and 2010, and for the prospect of democracy more generally.

What Lies Ahead

The four books featured in this review essay were all published in 2009, and consequently neither of the two elections is analyzed in any of these books. This is indeed a pity since one wonders whether and how conclusions would have been modified. Still, assessments about the prospects for democracy in Iraq are made in three of the four books.Footnote ¹⁷ The general tone is one of uncertainty, of not making categorical statements, of hedging one's bets. Munson, for example, in his final chapter entitled “Wither Transition,” opines that “the outcome hangs in the balance. It could swiftly and decisively turn to chaos and illiberalism, yet it will take considerable time and work to build stability. Democracy is a possible, but distant prospect” (Iraq in Transition, p. 241). So if one were to draw a continuum of this uncertainty from the most pessimistic to the most optimistic, then Munson might be considered a moderate pessimist.

Arato probably sits farther along the pessimism continuum. He carefully expresses two overriding concerns about the eventual actualization of democracy in Iraq. One relates to the process of constitution writing, which allowed Iraq's divisions to seep through the document's articles (particularly the exclusionary bargaining and private dealings with Kurds) with a result that “doomed the prospects of solution to Iraq's problems” (Constitution Making, p. 256). His second concern is the lack of state building, since to him political integration is necessary for political agency. So while democracy in Iraq is not impossible, the war and occupation's destruction of state structures and institutions make democratic transition “extremely difficult” (p. 263). While the first of Arato's concerns continues to be unresolved, one wonders whether his second might be somewhat tempered in light of political developments in 2009–10.

O'Leary, on the other hand, concludes that “as long as the elections do not deliver power to parties determined to replace democracy with theocracy or autocracy, Iraq will have begun the walk toward regime consolidation,” and that this democratic Iraq will be of benefit to all (How to Get Out, p. 195). Contrary to Arato, O'Leary insists that such a democratic eventuality cannot come to pass unless parliament adopts the constitution as is, without any tampering. O'Leary sees the Kurdish-favoring constitution as not just fair but necessary for the survival of Iraq. He thus prescribes that “disputed territories [should] be resolved largely in Kurdistan's favor,” and that for federation to work, the United States “should do what it need to do and steer its hard and soft power toward supporting the Kurdistan region” (p. 191). In light of these conclusions, one wonders what O'Leary's thinking is about the 2010 elections, which decisively favored nationalist and centralizing political parties.

The Elections and the Prospects for Democracy

There has been a discernible change in the political and security situation in Iraq in the past two years. And while the verdict is surely not yet in, the changed situation offers grounds for a cautious optimism. The most important source of this change is the conduct and outcomes of the 2009 provincial and 2010 general elections.

The 2009 provincial elections centered on governance. The parties with religious connections that had won positions of political leadership in the 2005 provincial elections in the South had fared miserably in the eyes of the voters when it came to the business of governance. Corruption and incompetence were rampant, and security was almost nonexistent as militias controlled the streets, infiltrating security forces and imposing their own brand of justice. After four years of unbridled lawlessness, the population, regardless of its religious and sectarian affiliations, ached for the kind of security and adherence to laws usually provided by strong states.

By the summer of 2008, the ability of the state to subdue predatory substate groups among Shi'ites and Sunnis, and to impose a semblance of law and order on the country as a whole, found Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki standing in good stead among the voters. Maliki extracted himself from the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the grand Shi'ite coalition of which he had been a member, and which had won the largest number of seats in the 2005 elections. He formed a new party that, in light of what people were demanding, he shrewdly named The State of the Law, which he projected in the electoral campaign as an Iraqi nationalist party.

The results of the provincial elections confirmed the ascendency of forces favoring a centralizing state able to confront sectarian and fissiparous elements. Maliki's State of Law scored impressive victories against the Shi'ite religious parties, garnering more votes than any other electoral entity in 9 of the 14 provinces that contested the elections. In Sunni areas, where support for Maliki was at best uncertain, the emphasis on the state still had an impact on the elections by undermining traditional sectarian leaderships, bringing to the fore political forces that were more national and secular in their attitudes.

The voters would deal a further blow to the old ways of doing political business in the 2010 general elections. Significantly, the main competitor of the State of Law was not the Shi'ite alliance that depicted itself and was perceived as the inheritor of the UIA mantle but the nationalist and virulently secular al-Iraqiya coalition. And, indeed, the two nationalist groupings between them garnered about 50% of the parliamentary seats, compared to 21% won by the Shi'ite coalition and 13% that went to the traditional Kurdish alliance. Significantly, of the 275 sitting parliamentarians who had been elected in 2005 for no other reason than their ethno-sectarian identity, only 62 were returned.

To loosely paraphrase Winston Churchill, the 2010 elections in no way mean that Iraq has successfully reached the end of the democratic road. What these elections do indicate is that the country and its people might have gone beyond the initial phase in the transition process. Democratic attitudes seem to be maturing; unlike their electoral behavior in the 2005 elections, voters this time did not simply vote their ethno-sectarian identities. The jettisoning of some 80% of sitting parliamentarians suggests that blind sectarianism has been replaced by merit and the perceived ability to get the job done as criteria of electoral choice. And while the undue bickering among politicians that followed the elections might have exhibited signs of democratic adolescence, if not puerility, at least it was conducted under the democratic conventions of discussion and resort to the law, rather than under the gaze of militia rifle barrels.

There are still many turns and not a few potholes on the road to democratic consolidation in Iraq. But the journey so far shows promise. With continued improvement in governmental performance, support from the international community, and some old-fashioned good luck, what is today a promised aspiration might yet become a reality.