The Rise and Fall of Secular Politics in Iraq
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- What explains the political success and failure of secular politics in Iraq? A conventional account would suggest that Iraqis, divided by sectarian conflict, would be unable to organize politically around issues rather than identities, with negative implications for democratic consolidation. I document the history of secular political organization in Iraq in the pre-Ba’thist period to demonstrate that non-sectarian forms of political organization did in fact exist but did not consolidate because of avoidable errors that Great Britain made in building Iraqi institutions. Next, I discuss the electoral process in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. While Iraq’s leading secular coalition, Iraqiyya, won a plurality of seats in the 2010 parliamentary election, secular parties lost drastically in the 2014 elections. Why? In addition to coalition weakness and lack of external support, I empirically show that sectarian violence suppressed voter turnout among secular voters. While sectarian Shia parties had Iranian-backed militias to protect their constituents, secular parties did not with the effect of disincentivizing political participation. My results suggest that democratic consolidation is not possible in without a minimum threshold of security. Without a secure environment, cycles of ethnic violence can persist, inhibiting the creation of a secular political culture. Tailored electoral systems and an even playing field are also essential to encouraging cross-sectarian outreach. If we believe that issue-based politics are good for consolidating democracy, this research helps to explain why post-2003 Iraq failed to achieve the aspirations of American democracy promoters and how the consequences are still affecting US security today.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 23, 2017 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Keller, Tori |
|---|---|
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation |
| Primary advisor | Blaydes, Lisa |
Subjects
| Subject | Center for International Security and Cooperation |
|---|---|
| Subject | governance |
| Subject | security |
| Subject | Iraq |
| Subject | state-building |
| Subject | American foreign policy |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Keller, Tori. (2017). The Rise and Fall of Secular Politics in Iraq. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/tt219ff7717
Collection
Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, Theses
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- Contact
- tori2k@stanford.edu
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