Adeed Dawisha

How to Build a Democratic Iraq

THUS FAR, most of the endless talk about the war in Iraq has focused on several issues: the scale of the operation, Washingtons motivation, and the rift in the Atlantic alfiance. It is now safe to assume, however, that if and when war comes (as of this writing, the battle had yet to begin), the United States and its allies will win, Saddam Hussein and his cronies will be toppled, and some sort of massive military occupation will follow. In the aftermath of the war, the occupiers will focus on immediate tasks, such as ensuring order, providing relief to the long-suffering Iraqi people, and asserting control over the country. Very quickly, however even before they have met these goals-the victorious powers will have to answer another pressing question: How, exactly, should they go about rebuilding the country? Saying simply that postwar Iraq should be democratic will be the easy part. Just about everyone agrees on that, and indeed, for many this end will justify the entire operation. The more difficult question will be how to make it happen. Fortunately, the job of building democracy in Iraq, although difficult, may not be quite as hard as many critics of the war have warned. Iraq today possesses several features that will facilitate the reconstruction effort. Despite Saddams long repression, democratic

The Prospects for Democracy in Iraq: challenges and opportunities

There are many challenges to the development of democracy in Iraq: the many decades of authoritarian rule; ethno-sectarian divisions; lack of security; and the hegemony of the state over the national economy. But the right policies could transform these challenges into opportunities. Opinion makers should strive to resurrect into the collective memory of Iraqis the relatively liberal political practices of the 1921 – 58 period. Federal arrangements should bridge the ethno-sectarian divide, and an economy that shifts radically to the private sector should lessen middle class dependence on the state, thereby further eroding the centralisation of state power. The mushrooming of liberal and civil society institutions since April 2003 is an encouraging development.

Iraq's Year of Voting Dangerously

Abstract:The year 2005 may prove to have been one of the most politically consequential in the modern history of Iraq. In the space of less than eleven months, the country held three elections. The elections took place successfully, with Iraqis voting in large numbers despite widespread logistical challenges, terrorist intimidation, and insurgent violence. But in their entrenchment of ethnic and sectarian fissures as the main organizing principle of politics, the three votes highlighted the role and limits of electoral-system design in the quest to manage and contain potentially polarizing divisions.

A Methodological Introduction

The study of international relations generally and foreign policy in particular has suffered, until recently, from an excessive concentration on the external activities of the great and medium powers, neglecting in the process the foreign policy behaviour of the countries of the third world.1 Not only does this undue emphasis on the large, industrialised and organisationally complex states reveal an obvious parochialism on the part of Western scholars, but it also carries an implicit assumption that states with different attributes (e.g. size, population, level of development, etc.) exhibit similar traits in their foreign policy behaviour—that for example an understanding of British foreign policy should by definition, lead to an appreciation of, say, Burmese or Jordanian external relations.

Iraq: A Vote Against Sectarianism

Abstract: Although many Iraqi parties continue to be organized along religious or ethnic lines, both the tone and the results of the 2010 parliamentary election campaign show that most Iraqi voters prefer a broader national agenda over narrow sectarian appeals.

Arab Nationalism and Islamism: Competitive Past, Uncertain Future

The Multiple Identities of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis (New York: Schocken Books, 1999). 163 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-8052-4172-8),

Iran's Mullahs and the Arab Masses

24.00. Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789–1923, Efraim Karsh, Inari Karsh (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 409 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-674-25152-0).

Perceptions, Decisions and Consequences in Foreign Policy: The Egyptian Intervention in the Yemen:

29.95. Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age, R. Stephen Humphreys (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 297 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-520-21411-0),

External and Internal Setting

29.95. Books reviewed in this article: Bernard Lewis, The Multiple Identities of the Middle East Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789–1923 R. Stephen Humphreys, Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age

Epilogue: Syria in Lebanon, 1976–79

Abstract For the Muslim mass of the Arab world, the success of Irans revolution represented the advent of a new heroic age of Islamic assertion and glory, the long-awaited confirmation of the power of faith over Western secularism. But as Khomeinis promised land recedes further away into the distant horizon, the spontaneous love affair between Muslim Arabs and Irans clerics is turning into a bitter disillusionment.