The Kurdish Consociational Experiment in Post-Saddam Iraq: A Practice-Theoretical Approach

This paper addresses the application of consociationalism to post-authoritarian Iraq. Traditionally, consociationalism has served as simultaneously an analytical tool and a normative constitutional and institutional ideal; here, I discuss whether it presupposes a functioning liberal democracy or may also, conversely, help to create a (liberal) democracy in non-liberal (in particular Leninist) settings. As a case study, I focus on the consociational arrangements between rival Kurdish parties in the post-1991 Kurdistan Region and between Kurds and other parties in post-2003 Iraq. I argue that the latter are in important respects modeled on the former. On a theoretical level, I argue that these consociational arrangements are best analyzed not in institutional terms but in terms of practices and of strategies and tactics in ongoing power struggles. A refocus on practices leads us to rethink the normative assumptions of consociational theory, in particular concerning questions of legitimacy and the distinction between formal and informal consociation. It can better account for the instability of (informal) consociational arrangements and raises the question of how to account for non-liberal (and in particular Marxist–Leninist) state traditions in consociational analyses.