The implications of elections for federalism in Iraq: Toward a five-region model

Publius: The Journal of Federalism

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 359-382

  Anderson, Liam ^a   Stansfield, Gareth ^b  

^a WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 26644467461     PISSN: 00485950     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/publius/pji024     Document Type: Review

References (87)

1. We do not mean to imply from this any normative judgment about the merits or otherwise of Kurdish secessionism or the political dominance of Islamic parties. Indeed, given the treatment the Kurds have received at the hands of successive regimes in Iraq (and Turkey), there is a strong moral argument to be made in favor of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Likewise, insofar as the success of religious parties in recent elections reflects the will of the majority of the Iraqi people, it is a democratic outcome that is as normatively acceptable as any other. Our point, however, concerns the implications of these developments for the stability of Iraq and its prospects of holding together as a coherent territorial entity. This does assume, of course, a preference for a unified Iraq, and that all groups (including the Kurds) are better off having their preferences satisfied within the borders of a single state rather than suffering through an uncertain and potentially violent process of fragmentation.
2. The Kurds remain the most vocal advocates of a federal system (based around an ethnically defined Kurdish region). Among Shi'a groups, the UIA's campaign platform for the January elections included a commitment to a "constitutional, pluralistic, democratic and federally united Iraq." This commitment reflects other statements by Shi'a leaders such as the 2001 "Declaration of the Shi'a," a document authored by prominent Shi'a exiles, in which the authors called for a "federal system" in order to "fully accommodate Iraq's diversity" (http://www.al-bab.com/arab/ docs/irag/shia02a.htm).
3. Among Shi'a forces, only radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has expressed strong reservations about federalism in Iraq (Nimrod Raphaeli, "Moqtada Al-Sadr: The Young Rebel of the Iraqi Shi'a Muslims," The Middle East Media Research Institute, 11 February 2004, pp. 3-4). The attitude of Sunni Arabs toward federalism is difficult to discern because Sunni Arab political interests are extremely fragmented and there is currently no credible "mouthpiece" of the Sunnis to articulate a position on the issue.
4. Brendan O'Leary, "Multi-national Federalism, Federacy, Power-Sharing, and the Kurds of Iraq" (keynote address, "Multi-Nationalism, Power-Sharing and the Kurds in a New Iraq," Cafritz Foundation Conference Center, George Washington University, 12 September 2003).
5. Important works that examine such problems include Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987);
6. Ronald L. Watts, Comparing Federal Systems (Montreal and Kingston: School of Policy Studies, Queen's University, 1999);
7. Preston King, Federalism and Federation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982);
8. Mikhail Filipov, Peter C. Ordeshook, and Olga Shetsova, Designing Federalism: A Theory of Self-Sustainable Federal Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
9. Thomas Franck, Why Federations Fail: An Inquiry into the Requisites for a Successful Federation (New York: New York University Press, 1966);
10. Valerie Earle, Federalism: Infinite Variety in Theory and Practice (Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock, 1968);
11. Ivo Duchacek, Comparative Federalism: The Territorial Dimensions of Politics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970);
12. William H. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964).
13. For a useful summary article of the state of the discipline, see Daniel J. Elazar, "International and Comparative Federalism," PS: Political Science and Politics 26 (June 1993): 190-195.
14. A Staatsvolk can be defined as a single national (or ethnic) people that dominates a state demo-graphically and electorally. On the significance of a Staatsvolk for the stability and success of federations, see Brendan O'Leary, "An Iron Law of Nationalism and Federation? A (Neo-Diceyian) Theory of the Necessity of a Federal Staatsvolk, and of Consociational Rescue," Nations and Nationalism 7 (2001): 273-296.
15. On the importance of the character of subunits, see Ronald Watts, Multicultural Societies and Federalism (Ottawa: Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 1970).
16. Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 195-197.
17. For a summary of the argument endorsing the drawing of boundary lines across communities, see Maurice Vile, "Federation and Confederation: The Experience of the United States and the British Commonwealth," Political Cooperation in Divided Societies, ed. P. Rea (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1982), pp. 216-228.
18. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
19. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Ibid., 604.
20. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Ibid., 605.
21. This is perhaps not surprising given that some scholars consider federalism to be a subset of pluralism. See King, Federalism and Federation, p. 19.
22. We use the neutral term "plurinational" in preference to the more pejorative term "ethnic" because the latter is usually employed by critics of using federal arrangements to accommodate diverse minorities. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
23. Chaim Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," International Security 20 (Spring 1996): 136-175.
24. Chaim Kaufmann, International Security, Ibid., 137.
25. Standard works on the modern history of Iraq include Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
26. Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985);
27. Liam D. Anderson and Gareth Stansfield, The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy, or Division (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004);
28. Sandra Mackey, The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2002).
29. On the use of violence as a tool of state policy, see Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modem Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989);
30. Said K. Arburish, Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (New York: Bloomsbury, 2000).
31. For concise summaries of historical divisions, see Dawn Brancati, "Can Federalism Stabilize Iraq?" Washington Quarterly 27 (Spring 2004): 8-11;
32. Andreas Wimmer, "Democracy and Ethno-religious Conflict in Iraq," Survival 45 (Winter 2003-2004): 113-119.
33. Estimates of the numerical presence of various communities in the population can only be considered rough approximations and the numbers are often hotly contested by the communities themselves. The most recent reliable census was conducted during the last days of the monarchy in 1957. Censuses conducted under Ba'athist rule were highly politicized affairs, often designed to maximize the Arab population at the expense of other ethnicities (particularly the Kurds) in order to serve strategic purposes, such as ensuring an Arab majority in the disputed city and province of Kirkuk.
34. Geographically, the Kurds dominate in the three northern provinces of Dohuk, Irbil, and Suleimaniyah. They are also a majority (or at least a plurality), in Kirkuk province, home to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Elsewhere, Kurds form sizable minorities in Diyala and Ninevah. Sunni Arabs constitute the majority in at least two provinces (Anbar and Saluhadin) and, probably, pluralities in Ninevah and Diyala. All provinces south of Baghdad are dominated by Shi'a Arabs, though many contain significant Sunni minorities. Baghdad itself is a diverse city in which Shi'a Arabs constitute at least a plurality, with significant populations of Sunni Arabs and even Kurds.
35. Of a total of 8.5 million votes cast in the elections, "The Iraqis" obtained 151,000 votes and the Iraqi Islamic Party, 21,000 votes. This would put Sunni turnout at about 2 percent of the total. Assuming Sunni Arabs comprise 15-20 percent of Iraq's population, this implies that turnout among Sunnis was somewhere between 5 and 10 percent.
36. At present, Sunni Arabs make up only seventeen of the 275 deputies in the National Assembly.
37. According to the Kurdistan Referendum Movement, of the 1,973,412 people who participated in the referendum 1,953,762 voted for independence from Iraq (http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/1720506.php; accessed 9 February 2005). These figures should be treated with some caution as they have not been independently verified.
38. It is possible, but unlikely, that the strong showing of Kurdish parties may have the opposite effect in that the political strength of the Kurds relative to other groups may allow them to secure their interests within Iraq, thus diffusing secessionist sentiment. The problem, however, is that many Kurdish demands are simply incompatible with what Arab groups (who still, collectively, constitute about 80 percent of the population) are likely to be prepared to accept. Unless the Kurds are willing to back down on, say, the status of Kirkuk, it is difficult to see how a major confrontation can be avoided. The threat to the stability of Iraq, then, is that the relative political strength and coherence of the Kurds, combined with the referendum result, will make the Kurds less, not more, willing to compromise on divisive issues such as Kirkuk.
39. The IVP is sometimes assumed to be the political vehicle of Muqtada al-Sadr. However, while it is part of a broader "Sadrist" movement, the party's allegiance is to Muqtada's father (Muhammed Sadiq al-Sadr) via Ayatollah Muhammed al-Yacoubi, the IVP's founder. In terms of hostility toward the occupation and commitment to an Islamic state in Iraq, however, the IVP and Muqtada are largely indistinguishable.
40. Of the eighteen councils, seventeen have forty-one total seats, and the other (Baghdad) has fifty-one.
41. Indeed, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani's influence may be the only "glue" that currently holds the UIA together. Otherwise, the UIA is a loose coalition of twenty-three diverse (mainly Shi'a) groupings that embrace a wide variety of ideological viewpoints (Ashraf Khalil, "Continued Unity of Shiite Alliance Faces Challenges," The Seattle Times, 30 January 2005).
42. For example, the armed wing of SCIRI (the Badr Brigades) is the major security force in several southern provinces, such as Karbala and Muthana. Religious militias have also begun to assert themselves in Basra. See George Packer, "Letter from Basra: Testing Ground," The New Yorker, 15 March 2005; http://www,newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050228fa_fact
43. ; Solomon Moore, "Recent Violence Stirs Sectarian Tensions in Once-Quiet Basra," The Los Angeles Times, 20 April 2005; http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-basra20apr20,0,3731259. story?coll=la-home-world.
44. Once again, the wording of the TAL does not provide much clarity. The agreed wording, that Islam is to be a source of law, sits uncomfortably with Article 7, which forbids laws that contradict the "universally agreed tenets of Islam" (whatever these may be).
45. A detailed analysis of the political significance of the insurgency is beyond the scope of this paper. Needless to say, unless Sunni Arabs can be reintegrated into the political process, the prospects for defeating the insurgency are bleak.
46. O'Leary, "Multi-national Federalism," p. 10.
47. Author interviews with PUK and KDP political leaders, March-April 2004. See also O'Leary, "Multi-national Federalism," p. 11;
48. International Crisis Group, Iraq's Kurds: Toward an Historic Compromise? (Amman/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2004).
49. The Kurds would probably stop short of an outright declaration of independence and would instead withdraw behind the "green line" that separates Kurdish from Arab Iraq and govern themselves as a de facto independent state.
50. A notable exception here is O'Leary, "Multi-national Federalism." See also Karen Eklund, Brendan O'Leary, and Paul R. Williams, "Negotiating a federation in Iraq," The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq, ed. Brendan O'Leary, John McGarry, and Khaled Salih (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), pp. 116-142, for an important discussion of the various possibilities (including a five-region model) for organizing a federal system in Iraq.
51. Iraq's eighteen provincial boundaries were established in 1968 by the Ba'athist regime, and (with some gerrymandering) have remained in place ever since.
52. Some scholars advocate territorial federalism on the grounds that anything is preferable to an ethnic form of federalism for Iraq. See, e.g., Kanan Makiya, "A Model for Post-Saddam Iraq," Journal of Democracy 14 (July 2003): 5-12.
53. Others are more explicit about the need to retain the eighteen-province model as a divide-and-conquer mechanism. See, e.g., Adeed Dawisha and Karen Dawisha, "How to Build a Democratic Iraq," Foreign Affairs 82 (May-June 2003): 36-50;
54. Daniel Byman, "Constructing a Democratic Iraq," International Security 28 (Summer 2003): 47-78;
55. Andreas Wimmer, "Democracy and Ethno-religious Conflict in Iraq";
56. Alec Walen, "Federalism for Postwar Iraq," Findlaw's Writ (http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20030410_walen.html).
57. Author interviews with PUK and KDP political leaders, March-April 2004. The Kurdish leadership has proven willing to compromise on a number of issues. For example, regarding the status of Kirkuk, the Kurds agreed to postpone a final resolution of this issue rather than insisting on its immediate incorporation into the Kurdish region. However, it is simply inconceivable that the Kurdish leadership could compromise on the issue of a separate Kurdish region within a federal Iraq.
58. Bicommunal federations have a particularly poor track record in terms of survival. On the problems associated with bicommunal federations, see Ronald Watts, Comparing Federal Systems, pp. 113-114;
59. Ivo Duchacek, "Dyadic Federations and Confederations," Publius: The Journal of Federalism 18 (1988): 5-31.
60. Author interviews with Kurdish political leaders, March-April 2004.
61. As Brendan O'Leary, who was directly involved in the drafting of the TAL, notes, the goal of the wording was to recognize officially the status of the Kurdish region while maintaining the pretense that ethnicity is not the defining feature of the region. Insofar as other ethnicities (Turkomans, Assyrians, Arabs) inhabit the Kurdish-controlled region, it is obviously not a monoethnic region, but the Kurds are heavily numerically dominant throughout and plainly view this as "their territory" (Brendan O'Leary, personal communication).
62. For a critical analysis of the arguments against asymmetrical federalism, see John McGarry, "Asymmetrical Federalism and the Plurinational State" (working draft position paper for the Third International Conference on Federalism, Brussels, 3-5 March 2005).
63. Of course, this formulation can serve more than one political purpose. After decades of perceived oppression at the hands of Sunni regimes, it may simply reflect a desire on the part of the Shi'a to move Iraq beyond ethnic/sectarian identities. At the same time, however, as the majority community in Iraq, it is the Shi'a who benefit politically by treating all groups equally (i.e., not granting special rights or protections to minority groups).
64. The full text of the TAL available at http://www.cpa_iraq.org/government/ TAL.html.
65. Under the system outlined in the TAL (or something similar), this basic problem of constitutional asymmetry would be exacerbated by the bicommunal nature of the resulting federation. On the problems of resolving political issues in bicommunal federations, see David E. Schmitt, "Problems of Accommodation in Bicommunal Societies," Conflict Quarterly 11 (Fall 1991): 7-18.
66. For the text and a defense of al-Rubaie's proposal (which he terms "Democratic Regionalism"), see http://institutkurde.org/confIrak/ Rubaie.htm (accessed 20 September 2005).
67. On the evolution of the Spanish model, see Robert Agranoff, "Federal Evolution in Spain," International Political Science Review 17 (1996): 385-401.
68. Christopher Dickey, "Make or Break," Newsweek, 10 November 2004; http:/msnbc.msn.com/id/6453400/site/newsweek/print/1/.
69. Khaled Yacoub Oweis, "Interview - Iraq's Chalabi Suggests Autonomy for Oil-Rich South," Yahoo! India News, 28 January 2005; http://in.news.yahoo.com/050127/137/2j9hb.html.
70. See Institute of War and Peace Reporting, "Federalism Demands in South," IWPR's Iraqi Crisis Report 111 (4 February 2005);
71. "Sunni Powers Oppose Federalism in Western Iraq," Assyrian International News Agency, 24 March 2005; http://www.aina.org/news/ 20050324135407.htm.
72. Those apparently opposed to the idea include prominent Sunni Arab groups the AMS and the IIP, along with Muqtada al-Sadr's faction. However, these groups oppose any form of federal system whether on the basis of eighteen provinces or five regions. The other major force in Iraqi politics that apparently (and perhaps fatally) opposes the five-region model is the United States (see Christopher Dickey, "Make or Break").
73. For example, the Mutada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army has clashed violently with SCIRI's Badr Brigade on the streets of Karbala and Najaf on several occasions.
74. The support for religious parties as evidenced by the recent elections is almost certainly exaggerated, however. In particular, the city/province of Basra has a long tradition of secularism and tolerance. The absence of viable secular alternatives at present and Sistani's tacit endorsement of the UIA (and, thereby, its constituent parties) undoubtedly helped the cause of religious parties.
75. The Iraqi Governing Council, a body appointed by Paul Bremer, head of the Provisional Coalition Authority, was an almost perfect microcosm of Iraq's various divisions. The twenty-five members of the council comprised thirteen Shi'a Arabs (a mix of religious and secular), five Sunni Arabs, five Kurds, an Assyrian, and a Turkoman.
76. The Interim Government (also a U.S. creation) was made up of Iyad Alawi (secular Shi'a, prime minister), Ghazi al-Yawer (Sunni Arab, president), Ibrahim al-Jaafari (religious Shi'a, vice president), and Rowsch Shaways (Kurd, vice president).
77. One of the most notable features of the recent election was the almost total absence of crossover parties with an appeal capable of transcending communities. In general, communities, whether Kurds, Turkomans, Sunnis, Shi'a or Assyrian, ran and voted for their own community parties.
78. See, for example, Jim Michaels and Rick Jervis, "Dispute Escalates between Shiites, Sunnis," USA Today, 18 April 2005; http://wwwusatoday.com/ news/world/iraq/2005-04-18-shiites-sunnis_x.htm;
79. Solomon Moore, "Recent Violence Stirs Sectarian Tensions";
80. Thanassis Cambanis, "Fractured Iraq Sees a Sunni Call to Arms," The Boston Globe, 27 March 2005; http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/ articles/2;
81. Nicholas Blandford, "Ethnic Divide Deepens in New Iraq," The Christian Science Monitor, 8 March 2004; http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0308/ p01s04-woiq.htm.
82. On increasing levels of ethnic tension in Mosul and Kirkuk, see Patrick Cockburn, "Iraq's Northern Capital Stalked by Suicide Bombers," The Independent, 15 April 2005; http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp? story=6;
83. Soran Dawoodi, "Rallies Provoke Fears of Unrest in the Ethnically-Mixed City of Kirkuk," KurdishMedia, 11 October 2004; http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=5583;
84. Mark McDonald, "If Civil War Erupts after Handover, Kirkuk May Be Its Starting Point," Knight Redder Newspapers, 24 June 2004; http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9004241.htm?template=contentModules/ prin;
85. George Packer, "The Next Iraqi War," The New Yorker, 7 October 2004; http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/041004fa_fact;
86. Steve Fainaru, "In Mosul, a Battle 'Beyond Ruthless,'" The Washington Post, 13 April 2005; http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48017- 2.
87. Of course, the design of Iraq's federal system is only one among many institutional choices that will have a bearing on the coherence of Iraq's political space. Other institutional choices - the use of a proportional representation electoral system, for example - will also be a major factor in this equation.