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.