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In 2005, under the auspices of the U.S. occupation, Iraq adopted a
constitution that defined the first parliamentary cycle as a
"transitional" period. Between 2005 and 2010 the political system
would become transformed from one dominated by power-sharing among
ethno-sectarian communities toward a more robustly national,
issue-based form of democracy with a strong prime minister. As the
U.S. sharply reduced its troop presence in Iraq in 2010, it became
clear that this democratic transition had not happened. The lengthy
process of government formation after the March 2010 election
remained influenced by the same ethno-sectarian bargaining that had
characterized Iraqi politics five years earlier. The goal of having
a strong prime minister with a national orientation was still
distant. In fact, most Iraqi politicians seemed to cling to the
instruments of ethno-sectarian quotas and regional patronage as a
way of bolstering their own influence. This book looks in detail at
political developments in Iraq, 2005-2010, to explain what went
wrong at the level of Iraq's parliamentary politics between 2005
and 2010. It argues that most players on the Iraqi scene never
tried to move towards a more progressive form of politics. Only one
leading Iraqi politician, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, even tried
to pursue the constitutional vision of a majoritarian democracy-and
he failed. But Iraq's politicians are not the only ones at fault.
Another key theme in "A Responsible End?" is the strong role played
by the U.S. government and the United Nations in enshrining a
retrograde, ethno-sectarian politics in Iraq during a period that
was supposed to be about political progress. About the Author
Reidar Visser is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of
International Affairs. He has a background in history and
comparative politics and holds a doctorate in Middle Eastern
studies from the University of Oxford. He has published extensively
on the history of southern Iraq and issues of decentralization and
federalism relating to Iraq. His two previous books were "Basra,
the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq"
(2005) and (co-edited with Gareth Stansfield) "An Iraq of Its
Regions: Cornerstones of a Federal Democracy?" (2007). Many of
Visser's writings are available from his Iraq website,
www.historiae.org. He blogs regularly about Iraq at "Iraq and Gulf
Analysis." Veteran Washington-based military analyst Tom Ricks has
written, "Reidar Visser continues to produce some of the most
insightful analyses of Iraqi politics. I first came across him
three or so years ago when a member of Petraeus's staff said,
"Don't ask me If you want to understand Basra, read Reidar Visser."
The fall of Saddam Hussein's regime may have marked a watershed in
Iraqi history, but to the majority of Iraq's eighteen governorates,
the most dramatic challenges may lie ahead. With the formation of
federal entities south of Kurdistan enabled from 2008, fundamental
changes to Iraq's state structure can be expected over the coming
decade. The parameters of this open-ended process are poorly
understood in the West. There seems to be a widespread belief among
commentators that the federalisation of Iraq will lead, more or
less automatically, to the creation of three large regions based on
Iraq's dominant ethno-religious communities, the Shiite Arabs, the
Sunni Arabs and the Kurds. However, if the Iraqi constitution is
adhered to, such an outcome is actually quite unlikely. According
to the Iraqi charter, ethnicity has no role to play in the
delineation of Iraq's federal map. Instead regions --
geographically defined by the conversion or amalgamation of
existing governorates -- will form the building blocks of the new
Iraq, as has already been exemplified in 2009 and again in early
2010 by attempts to create a separate federal region in Basra. This
volume is the first to offer a comprehensive overview of
regionalism as a political force in contemporary Iraq.
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