I did not intend on writing again so soon, but I've been seized with a burst of inspiration. I figure that, given the fact of my departure to New York tomorrow, it's best to leave a last will and testament for after I'm stricken down a third time by another undue speeding ticket. Speaking of which, the first trial is in five days. If I'm found guilty then we can at least be assured of a very turbulent 2022. History hasn't ended, folks.
In any event, my attention has once again been pulled back to Iraq, after reading this rather short but clarifying piece. I am not one to hold any policy analyst from the American Enterprise Institute in great regard, but the thesis of Mr. Rubin's article was compelling in its recognition (perhaps unconscious) of the root of the Arab political dysfunction in the early 21st century. He warns of a return to the streets of the Iraqi public after the protest movement of late 2019 toppled Prime Minister Mahdi and the citizenry's disdain for the network of carefully balanced interests that constitute Iraq's ruling political clique today. He sees in Mustafa al-Kadhimi's present inability to rein in the proliferating venal offices of the civil service, his intimidation by the Popular Mobilization Force's state-paramilitary machinery, the Sadrist bloc's rise to power, and Iraq's dependence on its oil-sector as a toxic brew of conditions which, given a small spark, will combust into an anti-political explosion. In an earlier article, written just as the United States was prepared to dissolve its Provisional Authority, he points to the origins of Iraq's kleptocratic clique as rooted in the invading Coalition's failure to establish a truly representative electoral system. Foolishly, the PA chose to construct a new electoral system for Iraq based on party-slates and not single member constituencies. As such, key minority demographics, such as the Shiite Turkmen of Tal Afar and the party-skeptical Christians, were left to choose between no representation at all or voting with parties that had little regard for their interests (which is functionally the same thing anyway). Aspiring politicians were left to compete for the patronage of party functionaries who held control of the slates, the consequence of course being that, as Iraq descended further into a sectarian-tinged insurgency and political polarization, political candidates were forced to traffic in ever more inflammatory and identity-oriented language. This electoral system was reformed to a district-based electoral method after the 2019 protests, closer to what we have in the United States, but factional interests had entrenched themselves so deeply in the system that what we are still left with today is an Iraq whose unwieldy politics is suspended on a teetering seesaw. Large party blocs vie for power, struggle over the office of prime minister, sometimes attempt to kill each other in the streets (Kadhimi was nearly assassinated in a drone strike on November 7th, undoubtedly the work of the Fatah bloc), and all the while the state itself continues to expand its bureaucracy without a corresponding improvement in public services.
All of this smacks very much not simply of dysfunction but also corruption, as well as that other d-word which sends chills down the spines of all those who fancy themselves enlightened and rational: "degeneracy". It is a political vocabulary not merely restricted to the dissident corners of the new right, but which is rooted in a long history of public discourse, thought and imagery. It is no coincidence that Mr. Rubin invokes Lebanon's long history of communal violence when discussing Iraq. The problem is fundamentally the same in both countries. The problem is one that has vexed man since the late 18th century - the problem of party.
I have been accused in the past, when this issue has come up, of importing "western notions" into a region that is unsuitable for them. Particularly when suggesting that a transition to a partyless system, or the elevation of a trans-partisan "mono-party", would be adaptable to the particular circumstances of a country like Lebanon. To that I would simply point out that the very notion of a legitimate political opposition, and the norms that have allowed any political party anywhere in the world to flourish, first took root in the west. If anything, I am suggesting that a reversion back to what was once the standard for most of the Middle East's history would do much more to heal their strife than the current attempt to build a pluralist system out of fundamentally irreconcilable interests. The problem, of course, is that those interests are not interested in true representation at all. They have lost sight of their intended purpose and function, they have themselves created one of the starkest mass-elite divides in the world, with predictable results.
The notion of a political party was just as alien to the Anglo-American world of the 18th century as the Middle East of the 18th century. It was not at all clear in the newly formed United States then, as it is not clear for the Middle East now, that any type of political opposition should be legitimated. George Washington, that emblem of freedom and democracy, is on record asserting that "meetings in opposition to the constituted authorities" are improper and dangerous. Political clubs, parties, and all organized extra-constitutional structures were deemed a threat to republicanism itself. The institutions provided for by the Union's constitution were considered sufficient to deal with social and political discord, without the need to find recourse in parties. This was an attitude inherited from the British experience, where the wars of religion in the 17th century, with their extreme violence, scheming, and frequent attempts at usurpation, had left bitter memories of factional politics for all involved. Parties, simply put, were no better than factions of enterprising men who did not have the public good at heart and sought only to benefit themselves. For anyone observing Iraq or Lebanon (or Israel, Turkey, Italy, perhaps the entire world), this cannot be an unfamiliar sentiment.
Of course, the American revolutionaries perceived degeneracy of a much different sort infecting Britain's parliamentary system, whose membership remained largely unaligned even as the British electorate and suffrage expanded. Pocket boroughs, shifting factions, hereditary dominance, as well as purchase and arrangement in parliament all contributed to the widespread view at the time that the sun was declining on Britain and its system, that everything worthy of being learned from it had already crossed the Atlantic and would be preserved in the New World, away from the corrupting tendencies of the Old. It would escape the terminal decline that appeared to be sinking Britain by embracing a republican form of government which would imbue virtue through its representative constitutional framework. And it would do all of this without the fractious influence of party which had torn apart the Anglo world.
The first-party system, when it did emerge, did not come into being as an established and settled norm. The Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans looked askance at each other and attempted to absorb the other into their respective coalitions - in the hopes that doing so would eliminate party politics once and for all. This did in fact succeed, after the War of 1812 appeared to confirm the triumph of American virtue over British degeneracy, and the Federalists promptly collapsed. The Era of Good Feelings, as it is now known, was a period of unchallenged dominance for the Democratic-Republican party. The last uncontested presidential election was won in 1820 by the, not coincidentally, last of the Virginian dynasty of presidents: James Monroe. After appearing to clear the field of all opposition and securing nonpartisan rule, he had this to say about the future of the American experiment:
"Surely our government may go on and prosper without the existence of parties. I have always considered their existence as the curse of the country, of which we had sufficient proof, more especially, in the late war...We have no distinct orders. No allurement has been offered to the federalists to calm them down into a state of tranquility. None of them have been appointed to high office, and very few to the lowest...Parties have now cooled down, or rather have disappeared from this great theatre, and we are about to make the experiment whether there is sufficient virtue in the people to support our free republican system of governance."
Simply put: a free system of governance does not depend on the existence of political parties for its survival. Political opposition is not a necessary condition for the proper and judicious functioning of representative government. Instead, it is civic participation, oriented to the commonweal in opposition to private interest, that secures the foundation of liberty.
So there you have it. Iraq is not an insuperable problem. Mr. Rubin is probably quite right in supposing that the Iraqi people will again attempt to put pressure on their politicians. The 2021 electoral success and composition of the Sadrist bloc is one indication of the shape of things to come. Much like the Five Star Movement's populist alliance with Lega Nord after the 2018 Italian elections, Sadr's movement has shown itself ideologically flexible enough to align itself with parties that would appear anathema to its value system under any traditional analysis. In 2018, the alliance of its religious populist-nationalism with the Iraqi Communist Party's Marxism proved successful. It has allied itself with smaller catch-all parties that utilize the technocratic language of "reform" and "progress". The people's attachment to interest group politics has weakened as the elite-mass divide has grown stronger. Growing numbers of Sunnis, for instance, no longer see the Iraqi Islamic Party as representing their interests. And why should they? Their lives have not changed. It has only gotten worse. If Muqtada al-Sadr has his way, it is inevitable that his party will transform into the kind of techno-populist party that is emerging across the world. A populist and independent Iraq with a single mono-party, free of foreign influence, ruled by the Shiite Islamist equivalent of Lord Bolingbroke's patriot-king, answerable to the people, committed to reining in all faction and slashing the perverse incentive structure of the bureaucracy, will go far in halting the country's degeneration into perpetual internecine bloodshed.
If all of this sounds ridiculous, I invite the reader to consider the past 18 years of Iraqi history and to consider whether that is an acceptable price to pay for an electoral instantiation of pluralism that is, if nothing else, the true western artifice.
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