Teaching Comparative

Democratic political culture

What elements of political culture are necessary for democratic or republican government? Is prosperity needed? Does a state have to have great capacity? Does national security have to be secure? How about the practice of compromise and the reality of win-win conflict resolution?

Iraq may not be one of the AP6, but this example has important ideas to offer.

In Iraq, Even a Vote Hints at Violence

There is an Iraq that is rightly celebrated these days: images that have almost become clichéd of millions heading to the polls to elect leaders who have so far fallen far short of the ambitions in choosing them. There is the reality, too: a country that still hews to an older notion of politics in which, in the words of one politician, there are “absolute winners and absolute losers.” Eloquent rules are noisily broken, in a milieu infused with an impetus toward intolerance. The threat of violence, and often violence itself, is the discourse of politics, sometimes even celebrated as a means to an end in dividing spoils.

When in doubt, the rule goes, intimidate.

Before the elections, more than a hundred figures were killed along fault lines in Baghdad, Nineveh and Diyala. During the campaign, a coalition of retired bureaucrats intoned with youthful rage, “We will not permit our exploitation.” As the vote was tallied last week, everyone from Ayad Allawi, the secular standard-bearer and possible prime minister, to tribal Sheik Saadoun al-Aiffan's colleagues in Anbar declared that violence would be the consequence of fraud, a word that has become somewhat synonymous with faring poorer than expectations. And when the count was in, voters had placed an unpredicted confidence in loyalists of Moktada al-Sadr, whose militia was blamed for some of the war’s worst sectarian slaughter…

The roots of political violence run deep in Iraq, long a turbulent frontier between Romans and Persians, Ottomans and Safavids and, now, Americans and Iranians...

“There is a desire for open politics,” said Joost Hiltermann, a director at the International Crisis Group. “But there is a tendency to intolerance that is deeply ingrained by the former regime and by the reality of opponents fighting that regime.”

“It’s very much the political culture inculcated by the former regime,” he added…

A far milder version of uncompromising politics was on display last week during the count of last week’s votes. Several leaders warned fraud would unleash violence, and in a hint of the unease, rumors of assassination attempts were rife. Others threatened to declare the results illegitimate. Everyone seemed to contest rules that not everyone knew.

Perhaps it was simply maneuvering, but politicians’ words invariably echo in still-scarred streets. In one working-class neighborhood of Baghdad, a merchant insisted darkly that a victory for Mr. Allawi, the secular candidate, would, in his words, be refused.

“The militias would return to the streets,” he told me…

Sami al-Askari, a lawmaker and candidate with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said: “It’s a culture. The history of this area, most of the time, goes to the winners. It’s become part of the society, part of the culture. It’s not easy to take this society out of this mess. We need time, time to adapt ourselves to the new reality.”...

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Labels: concepts, democratization, pedagogy

posted by Ken Wedding @ 12:14 PM