Iraq : a political history

418 Pages·2009·2.78 MB·English

by  Adeed Dawisha

IRAQ
A POLITICAL HISTORY
IRAQ
A POLITICAL HISTORY
Adeed Dawisha
With a new afterword by the author
Copyright © 2009 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William
Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
All Rights Reserved
First printing, 2009
Third printing, and first paperback printing, 2011
Paperback reissue, with a new afterword by the author, 2013
ISBN 978-0-691-15793-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012955335
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Adobe
Garamond Printed on acid-free paper ∞
press.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Karen
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
CHAPTER TWO
Consolidating the Monarchical State, 1921–1936
CHAPTER THREE
Framing Democracy with a Certain Indifference, 1921–1936
CHAPTER FOUR
The Uncertain Nation, 1921–1936
CHAPTER FIVE
Turbulence in Governance, 1936–1958
CHAPTER SIX
Potholes in the Democratic Road, 1936–1958
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nationalism and the Ethnosectarian Divide, 1936–1958
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Monarchy’s Political System, 1921–1958
CHAPTER NINE
The Authoritarian Republic, 1958–1968
CHAPTER TEN
The State Rules without Rules, 1968–2003
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Politics in the New Era, 2003–
CHAPTER TWELVE
W(h)ither Iraq?
Notes
Bibliography
Afterword to the 2013 Edition: So Much Promise, So Many Disappointments
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research for this book was facilitated by the generous support of a number
of institutions. The Carnegie Foundation of New York selected me as a Carnegie
Scholar for the academic year 2004–2005. Freed from teaching and
administrative duties, I was able to devote myself fully to the project. Indeed,
during that year, the bulk of the research for the book was done. A travel grant
from Miami University’s Philip and Elaina Hampton Fund for Faculty
International Initiatives allowed me to undertake two trips to Lebanon to work in
the extensive archives of the Jafet Library of the American University of Beirut
(AUB). I am grateful to AUB’s President, Professor John Waterbury, his office,
and the staff of the library for facilitating my work in that great institution. I
spent many “dusty” hours in the Department of Special Collections, situated in
the basement of the library, consulting Iraqi archives that extended all the way
back to the early 1920s. I was also able to secure a grant for the summer of 2006
from the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII), which
allowed me to write Chapters Four, Five and Six, and thus complete the analysis
of the monarchical period.
I also wish to thank members of my graduate class in 2005 and 2006 who
contributed to my own understanding of the conceptual bases of the book. David
Rashid, a young undergraduate, offered to help with research for the book during
the spring semester of 2006. In thirty years of research and writing, I had never
used research assistants, but David was insistent and I took him on, and he did
not disappoint.
In some parts of the manuscript I have drawn on material that I had published
earlier in issues of the Middle East Journal and the Journal of Democracy. I am
grateful to the editors and publishers of these journals for granting me
permission to reprint segments of my articles in this book.
IRAQ
A POLITICAL HISTORY