Iraq: Inclusive Government May Lead to Gridlock

Kenneth M. Pollack, writing in The National Interest, argues that the new Iraqi government may be too inclusive: “The Iraqis went for an all-inclusive government because they could not sort out their political divisions. But forming one simply means bringing all of those differences inside the government, where they are likely to prevent it from actually governing.” Pollack goes on to say that “Iraq’s fragmented and immature political systems,” will be prone to gridlock due to the inability of the parliament to act as credible check on the power of the prime minister.

Reidar Visser, in an article supporting the idea that there are difficult times ahead, writes that a ruling by the Iraqi federal supreme court will give the newly elected speaker of the parliament, Usama al-Nujayfi of Iraqiyya, “preeminence” as the speaker, rather than an equal role within a “three-man presidency of the parliament” that has existed since 2006. However, Visser notes that it would be “prudent of them (Iraqiyya) to be aware that their logic of an orthodox reading of the constitution will probably apply with equal force to another institution that is much debated these days: the national council for strategic policies [...] which is not even mentioned in the constitution precisely like the ‘[collective] presidency of the parliament’ which Iraqiyya complained about to the supreme court.”