Democracy in the Margins: The Case of Iraq as an External Critique of Liberal Democracy

Liberal democracy, as ambiguous of a concept as it is, has been both praised and celebrated as the End of History (Fukuyama, 1992) and critiqued for its internal contradictions. In the West, there have been rich traditions of internal critiques, focusing on the inability of liberal-democratic political systems to reduce or alleviate persistent social inequalities, including racial, class, and gender inequalities, the challenge of creating and sustaining spheres for public deliberation, elite domination, and its incompatibility with capitalism and disenfranchisement.

This thesis extends such efforts to critique the challenges of the system by answering calls to bring perspectives external to the Western world into conversation. It specifically focuses on the Iraqi historical case, as a society that had a bittersweet experience with imposed liberal democracy. It attempts to answer the ways the case of post-2003 Iraq offers an external critique of liberal democracy that complements or contradicts existing internal critiques in Western social theory.

To achieve such objectives, the thesis provides a typology of internal critiques, focusing on three specific traditions that are complimentary to one another and comparatively compatible to the Iraqi case. These traditions include elite, public sphere, and social justice perspective. After constructing the typology, the thesis implements comparative historical methods to both trace the fundamental developments in post-2003 and compare how Iraqi scholarly perspectives contradict or compliment the Western internal critiques.

The thesis illustrates that while Iraqi scholars agree with Western critiques in terms of problems with elite domination, public sphere deficits, and inequality, they also add that monopoly on violence, constructing a shared national identity, and countering regressive tribal and ethno-religious tendencies is necessary for a functioning governance system.