Iraqi Federalism
Federalism [PDF alert] is touted as the great cure for the problem of governing Iraq.
But federalism risks encouraging Iraq’s centrifugal tendencies. And since territorial divisions along purely ethnic lines are impossible once you go north of Baghdad, pure federalism still would leave the country with grievous minority problems.
To thwart the rise of identity-based parties, then, a cross-regional voting law ought to be part of the new constitution. That would require parties to compete in a certain number of regions and to win a certain percentage of the vote in those regions to participate in the federal government. Russia, Indonesia and Nigeria have similar systems.
Ancient Athens had an almost identical problem to modern Iraq's. The Peisistratidai tyrant dynasty entrenched itself by exploiting regional conflict between the tribes, with their individual religious customs, and between the mutual hostility and different values of people in the coast, the interior, and the mountains.
The late 6th century B.C.E. statesman Kleisthenes forced a solution to this problem, and for this he is called the founder of Athenian democracy. His main achievement in government was redrawing the tribal map, which was something like the ancient equivalent of a congressional redistricting. But he did it in a way that amounted to a complete social reorganization of the Athenian state.
He set the number of tribes at 10, and he gave each a name and identity based on a god-hero. Then he divided the entire Athenian territory into electoral districts, and assigned all the citizens of each district to one or another of the tribes. But he set this up so that the chunks of turf of any tribe did not adjoin, and so that each of the tribes had a section in each of the three regions -- coast, inland, mountains.
This defused any chance of tribal barons building up a power base, and it forced the people to work together across geographical lines and local identifications.
A man's tribe and deme were hereditary, and he kept them even if he moved. The tribes were artificial ones at first, but they gelled because of the custom of having holidays and observances in common, and because men of one tribe now fought together in the same regiment (as Americans generally did, up through the Civil War), and because the Boule, the Athenian council or parliament, was to consist of 50 from each tribe -- elected by all the citizens of that tribe.
The system succeeded so well that it outlasted Athenian democracy itself, persisting into Roman times. It succeeded so well that modern historians have a difficult time reconstructing what came before it.
Unfortunately, that model, and that degree of social engineering, never could happen in modern Iraq.
By dividing power between two levels of government — giving groups greater control over their own political, social, and economic affairs while making them feel less exploited as well as more secure — federalism offers the only viable possibility for preventing ethnic conflict and secessionism as well as establishing a stable democracy in Iraq.
But federalism risks encouraging Iraq’s centrifugal tendencies. And since territorial divisions along purely ethnic lines are impossible once you go north of Baghdad, pure federalism still would leave the country with grievous minority problems.
To thwart the rise of identity-based parties, then, a cross-regional voting law ought to be part of the new constitution. That would require parties to compete in a certain number of regions and to win a certain percentage of the vote in those regions to participate in the federal government. Russia, Indonesia and Nigeria have similar systems.
Ancient Athens had an almost identical problem to modern Iraq's. The Peisistratidai tyrant dynasty entrenched itself by exploiting regional conflict between the tribes, with their individual religious customs, and between the mutual hostility and different values of people in the coast, the interior, and the mountains.
The late 6th century B.C.E. statesman Kleisthenes forced a solution to this problem, and for this he is called the founder of Athenian democracy. His main achievement in government was redrawing the tribal map, which was something like the ancient equivalent of a congressional redistricting. But he did it in a way that amounted to a complete social reorganization of the Athenian state.
He set the number of tribes at 10, and he gave each a name and identity based on a god-hero. Then he divided the entire Athenian territory into electoral districts, and assigned all the citizens of each district to one or another of the tribes. But he set this up so that the chunks of turf of any tribe did not adjoin, and so that each of the tribes had a section in each of the three regions -- coast, inland, mountains.
This defused any chance of tribal barons building up a power base, and it forced the people to work together across geographical lines and local identifications.
A man's tribe and deme were hereditary, and he kept them even if he moved. The tribes were artificial ones at first, but they gelled because of the custom of having holidays and observances in common, and because men of one tribe now fought together in the same regiment (as Americans generally did, up through the Civil War), and because the Boule, the Athenian council or parliament, was to consist of 50 from each tribe -- elected by all the citizens of that tribe.
The system succeeded so well that it outlasted Athenian democracy itself, persisting into Roman times. It succeeded so well that modern historians have a difficult time reconstructing what came before it.
Unfortunately, that model, and that degree of social engineering, never could happen in modern Iraq.
