Iraqi consociationalism woes

Posted on November 20th, 2009 Jack 6 comments  Print This Post

Iraq’s Sunni vice president vetoed the hard-won electoral law this week. More about that from Barak Hoffman and Matthew Shugart. The current impasse boils down to the apportionment formula. Sunni and Kurdish politicians think the deck is stacked against them.

So is Iraqi consociationalism coming apart, or is this mundane sectarian brinksmanship?

Iraq is our latest experiment in exporting consociationalism. The Iraqi state is built on explicit recognition and institutionalization of combatant ethnic and sectarian groupings. A closed-list PR system funnels these groups into their respective political parties, and, as we saw this week, governing requires the consent of a member of every ethnic group. Now, Iraq’s constitution is not explicit about this. Articles 66-75 set up a semi-presidential system with a unitary executive whose job is to sign legislation. Then there are the so-called “transitional provisions,” which basically divide the presidency among three people elected by 2/3 vote of the legislature. This all but guarantees that the Presidency Council will include one Shiite, one Sunni, and one Kurd, as it does now.

The problem with consociationalism is that, for it to work, elite politicians have to (1) control the combatant groups they represent and (2) desire compromise. The US constitution’s Framers approached institutional design from the safe assumption that politicians are nihilistic power maximizers. This led them to emphasize checks and balances and to riddle the American political system with veto points. Consociationalism, on the other hand, began as a category of observed behavior.¹ It was not the result of a deductive exercise. If game theory is good for anything, it’s good for designing institutions. We begin with an assumption about the preferences of key players (dictatorship by one’s ethnic group > killing each other > dictatorship of the other ethnic group), we choose a desired goal (violence prevention), and we proceed accordingly. Modeling a situation in this way certainly does not lead us to institutions that depend on mutual good will.

The veto of the new electoral law is entirely consistent with the institutional context. That is, we expect outcomes like this one when we run Iraq’s social profile through the consociational machinery of its democracy. I don’t think we are witnessing a constitutional crisis, at least in as much as “crisis” implies an extraordinarily stressful event. From another perspective, Iraq is in a perpetual state of constitutional crisis.

Let me go out on a limb with some predictions.

First, the election will happen, even if a little bit late. Hashemi’s veto is just another round in the ongoing game of chicken that defines constitutional decision-making in Iraq. Brinksmanship and eleventh-hourism have characterized most moments of important political choice since 2003. Why would preparing for the next national election be any different?

Second, there is nothing “transitional” about the “transitional Presidency Council.” What rational group would agree to give up its veto?

Third, Iraqi democracy will not consolidate any time soon. Recall that a car wreck is one solution to a game of chicken. We are more likely to see a dictatorship or civil war in Iraq than we are a stable, electoral democracy.

1. Ian Lustick has a good article about this.