There’s a lot of pressure for us to quickly implement direct democracy over in Iraq. While I’ll qualify this by noting that I haven’t read the details of the proposals, I’ll toss out one quick question, assuming that it means what it sounds like – a direct national vote for a legislative and possibly executive body.
One question that’s been nagging at me, and I’ve expected my blogging betters to have raised:
We don’t have this here in the U.S., as Al Gore’s supporters know to their peril.
And as creaky and Rube-Goldbergesque as our multitiered republic may be, it seems to have worked pretty well, in defending varied and conflicting interests.
Any reason why that would be a bad idea over there?
And can anyone point me to the nitty-gritty of what’s being proposed – past the Guardian and CNN stories?
Sorry, but I can’t answer your question but am left wondering about another one: are there any ‘direct democracies’ currently operating in the world?
Depends what you mean by direct – we elect congressmen without intermediaries I think.
The real issue is that many Shia (who comprise 60 percent of the country) want and expect to control the government. Many Sunnis, some of whom were part of governments oppressing Shia before Saddam came to power, fear the same will be done to them.
Another problem is the United States. We’re pretending we object to direct elections because there’s not time for an accurate census, but we are actually afraid the Shia will oppress the Sunnis (just as the Sunnis are) and the Sunnis will start (or maybe the word is continue) a civil war. If as Steven Den Beste and many others think, the UN will agree there is no time and the main Shia honcho agrees, the Shia will feel we have agreed to direct elections in a year or so, and we don’t want them at all – at least without some mechanism to make the government acceptable enough to the Sunnis that the majority of them won’t fight us, and ideally will even help us track down Al Qaeda and fellow travellers.
Your assignment for today is:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040109faupdate83175/kenneth-m-pollack/after-saddam-assessing-the-reconstruction-of-iraq.html
Ken Pollack in Foreign Affairs has a wide-ranging discussion of reconstruction, including a run-down of the November 15 agreement, and why he thinks it’s the best path:
“In its most basic form, the timeline laid out by the November 15 agreement is
as follows:
February 28, 2004: The CPA and the current Governing Council produce a
“Transitional Administration Law”24 that will serve as the interim constitution,
governing the activities of the Iraqi Interim Assembly (IIA) which will supplant
the IGC completely and the CPA in terms of handling the administration of
Iraq, until a permanent government can be formed.
March 31, 2004: The CPA and the current IGC will craft a new “Status of
Forces” agreement governing the U.S. military presence during the period when
the IIA is running Iraq under the terms of the Transitional Administration Law.
May 31, 2004: The IIA will convene to select an executive and appoint
ministers for a new interim government. The members of the IIA will be
selected through a very complex process. In each of Iraq’s 18 provinces, a
panel of 15 overseers will be chosen. For each panel, five of the overseers will
be nominated by the current Governing Council, five by the council of the
provincial government (which are currently being formed up in each province
from the local councils), and the last five selected one apiece by the local
councils of the five largest cities and towns in the province. These overseers will
then choose a number of delegates to the IIA relative to the demographic
weight of the province. However, every delegate chosen must secure the votes
of at least 11 of the 15 overseers, to ensure that each is at least minimally
acceptable to all three of the different groups.
June 30, 2004: The IIA assumes sovereignty and a greater degree of authority
over day-to-day affairs. The extent of that authority is yet to be determined,
however. At this point, the CPA will dissolve, but it is expected to be replaced
by another entity — whose shape has also not yet been defined.
March 15, 2005: Direct, popular elections will be held for a constitutional
convention to devise the new, permanent constitution, which will in turn be
ratified by a popular referendum.
December 31, 2005 or whenever the new constitution has been ratified:
Elections for a new Iraqi government will be held under the provisions of the
new constitution. Once the new government takes power, the Transitional
Administration Law will expire and the new constitution will become the law of
the land.”
Democracy’s a funny thing. It’s a fine idea, but we don’t really practice it very much.
As I understand it, the big debate is over whether to hold direct elections for representatives or whether to set up a system of local caucuses. Some say that caucuses are undemocratic and should therefore be dispensed with.
My take on this (although nobody asked) is that caucuses are the purest form of democracy. A caucus is a big room where people express their opinions and try to persuade each other. That’s democracy, right there. Not putting a ballot in a ballot box. The voting is just a formality of the system. True democracy is the free exchange of ideas, the exchange of opinions, the attempt to persuade your neighbors to take your side.
Government isn’t just casting votes. It’s making decisions.
When it comes to including Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites, et al in one government, there are two countries whose example everyone wants to avoid.
1. Yugoslavia, where nominal equality of ethic groups actually boiled down to domination by the Serbs, which caused the country to unravel as soon as it was allowed to.
2. Lebanon, where a power sharing system based on fixed population quotas was overtaken by demographic change with disasterous results.
So the US has good reason to resist the demands of Sisane and other Shiites for immediate democratic elections. Also we have to remember that an awful lot of rural Iraq is still in tribal organization, which means that establishment of the voter rolls is going to be extremely carefully done or else it’s void with a nod and a wink. Are women going to get equal votes?
It’s not about elections at all.
It’s about whether Sistani has veto power over the form and decisions of the impending Iraqi government. For rather obvious reasons it would be disasterous if he did. In fact, such a de facto theocracy would undoubtedly result in a whole bunch of neocons jumping ship and torpedo -Bush’s- reelection. I agree with den Beste that it won’t happen, but it’s a most delicate thing. (Although to the extent it’s proof that our problems in Iraq have gone from military to political ones, it’s a good sign no matter what.)
Less abstractly, it’s about whether the Shiites not only get the biggest say in the future government but the biggest (and determinative) say in -setting the rules- for the future government as well. For even more obvious reasons this wouldn’t be a great thing.
It is about both of the things Someone said – but one of the problems is that WE are the people trying to pretend it is about technical problems involving a census.
Are we now reduced to trying to write a foolproof constitution where we leave a democratically elected government in charge and try and set the rules so that if the majority has no belief in the concept of human rights and wants to persecute Sunnis as the Sunnis persecuted them, they can’t do it? That’s not enough – forget poetic justice, we need a fighting shot at convincing the Sunni’s they can do better than a civil war.
The text of the November 15 agreement is available here.
In brief:
* The CPA selects an Organizing Committee in each governorate.
* Each governorate Organizing Committee selects a Governate Selection Caucus.
* Each Governate Selection Caucus elects representatives to a Transitional National Assembly (TNA), to assume power by June 30.
Comments:
* The process is clearly, specifically, entirely non-democratic. Elections don’t entail democracy if an autocrat selects the electors.
* The process could lead to a reasonably representative TNA. If it did so, that would reflect the wisdom and benevolence of the CPA, not any democratic quality in the process.
* All this non-democracy pertains just to the TNA; the Constitutional Convention is to be directly elected.
* Anyhow, the agreement is now moot; the US now allows that everything but the June 30 deadline is up for grabs (Washington Post, 2004-01-25).
Alene stole my thunder in pointing to the link to the Pollack piece (the “other Pollack piece” for those of us who debated a different one last week).
For me when it comes to this aspect of things, how Iraq’s interum government is going to be selected, Pollack’s comments on Grand Ayatollah ‘Ali Sistani were of big interest. They should be for anyone who’s worried about what Sistani’s up (Praktike, for example). *IF* Pollack is right in his evaluation of Sistani, then I’m not too worried (I posted here today).
As for “everything being up for grabs now”, we’ll see. The fact that they’re being open to other ideas is often mischaracterized by those (Abu, WaPo) who usually think the Bushies never listen to anyone but themselves. Workable compromises are a part of politics, and this is the start of the political process in Iraq.
(Of course I don’t mean literally “stole”. I mean more “yah, what Alene said.”)
Abu – I’ll suggest a quick review of the history of the US Constitution, in which a group of self-selected adventurers managed to build a system that checked the power of the majority while keeping that same majority powerful.
Given that the current call is to staff a Constitutional Convention, I’m not aghast that the selection processes are undemocratic.
My question above was centered on the notion that there must be some drafts of a proposed Constitution floating around…
A.L.
A.L.:
My purpose is not to denounce the November agreement, but to point out that you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
When you (and Tacitus(*)) say “Don’t knock the caucuses, we don’t need direct democracy”, the general point’s valid, but it has no application in this context. Because the only caucuses under discussion here are part of an overtly non-democratic process.
You’ve got the facts wrong somehow. Either you think that Sistani and the CPA are contesting the role of caucuses in the permanent constitution — but they’re not, they’re discussing the transitional assembly — or you think that the caucuses proposed for the transitional assembly are an exercise of indirect democratic choice — but they’re not, they’re guaranteed 100 per cent democracy-free.
The November agreement provides for:
* Transitional National Assembly: elected by caucuses selected by “Organizing Committees” selected by the CPA — not indirect democracy but indirect autocracy
* Constitutional Convention: direct democratic elections
* government of Iraq, under the new constitution: no public discussion as yet
In short, there is no democratic caucusing process under discussion to defend here.
Given the crummy set of choices the CPA faced, I don’t much fault them for this one, except for one great flaw — it’s politically untenable — and to their credit (as Porph. says above) they have recognized that and are moving on.
(*) in comments below the head post
Abu –
No, I believe I understand the distinction in what’s going on with the proposed caucuses; I’m just suggesting that as they are proposed to establish the mechanism for governance (constitution) that I’m less sensitive to their democratic legitimacy that I would be if they were to be actually established to govern.
Look, here’s an example. One argument I heard a lot in the runup to the war was that “we couldn’t force the Iraqis to be democratic if they didn’t want to,” i.e. that democracy attained through undemocratic means isn’t really democracy.
I’m not too troubled by that.
And as someone who’s spent a lot of time dinking around in American constitutional history, the reality is that pure democracy – in which the interests of the minority get washed away by the will of the majority – isn’t what we have, and that fact is probably why we’ve been able to maintain a stable Republic for all these years.
A.L.
“No, I believe I understand the distinction in what’s going on with the proposed caucuses; I’m just suggesting that as they are proposed to establish the mechanism for governance (constitution) that I’m less sensitive to their democratic legitimacy that I would be if they were to be actually established to govern.”
They are being established to govern: the elections set up the legislature of the transitional government. This legislature will be handed sovreignity over Iraqi affairs on June 30th. They will adminstrate the law and make treaties and agreements in Iraq’s name. A period of at least a year and a half is to elapse before the constitutional convention, quite possible more. One would presume that, under the system outlined in the November 15th agreement, the elected representatives of our twice-handpicked delegates would acquiesce on such questions as the continuing presence of our troops there. (Though the initial agreement on our troop’s presence is to be determined without the TNA’s input.) Whether the Iraqi people would is another question entirely.
This is merely one issue, though a particularly inflamtory one. I employ it merely to throw into stark relief the central issue: whether people selected by such a process will be beleived by the people of Iraq to be their true representatives. The legitimacy of the transitional government is what is at stake.
For it is a transitional government, not merely a “constitutional convention.” You seem to discount the importance of our handing over sovreignity to the TNA. What’s to stop the TNA from never finishing the constitution and convening elections? Nothing, really. That is the fear driving all players at the moment — that what is being set up now is what they’re going to be stuck with forever. That’s why they’re making their play to shape it now. They do not trust that such representation will come later.
I direct you to Anthony Cordesman’s peice at the Center for Strategic and International studies, for he is far more knowledgeable and insightful than I.
From the “Pollack is hardly omniscient” file: actually, Chalabi supports these early elections.
A.L.:
. . . as [the caucuses] are proposed to establish the mechanism for governance (constitution) that I’m less sensitive to their democratic legitimacy that I would be if they were to be actually established to govern.
But the Transitional National Assembly doesn’t write the constitution, the Constitutional Convention does that (it may be true, as Cordesman suggests, that the Assembly could somehow rig or delay elections for the Convention).
Once more: the caucuses are for the TNA which doesn’t write the constitution; the constitution is written by the CC which isn’t elected by caucuses.
[all according to the November Agreement whose status is now in flux]
. . . pure democracy – in which the interests of the minority get washed away by the will of the majority – isn’t what we have . . .
Pretty much every commentator is agreed that for Iraq especially, unbridled majoritarianism would be a disaster. Which presents the challenge of devising a bridle and getting the majority to wear it.
. . . democracy attained through undemocratic means isn’t really democracy. I’m not too troubled by that.
Fine, no moral issues. But there are some practical ones, if the TNA is held illegitimate by a large section of Iraqis, and it takes far-reaching decisions that they reject.
Has anyone heard of a bicameral legislature? Hint: the U.S. has one. It should be an American mandate that such a system be incorporated in the Iraqi constitution. It’s the best way to manage the competing tribal and regional interests. Oh, but then we’d be imposing our will.
I dunno, folks. This thing may not work out. The U.S. can conquer, but it’s clueless what to do next.