The current President of Iraq is Abdul Latif Rashid, who holds most of the executive authority and appointed the Council of Ministers, which acts as a cabinet and/or government.
The northern autonomous provinces, Kurdistan Region emerged in 1992 as an autonomous entity inside Iraq with its own local government and parliament.[1]
The basic subdivisions of the country are the regions and the governorates. Both regions and governorates are given broad autonomy with regions given additional powers such as control of internal security forces for the region such as police, security forces, and guards.[12] The last local elections for the governorates were held in the 2009 Iraqi governorate elections on 31 January 2009.
The constitution requires that the Council of Representatives enact a law which provides the procedures for forming a new region 6 months from the start of its first session.[13] A law was passed 11 October 2006 by a unanimous vote with only 138 of 275 representatives present, with the remaining representatives boycotting the vote.[14][15] Legislators from the Iraqi Accord Front, Sadrist Movement and Islamic Virtue Party all opposed the bill.[16]
Under the law, a region can be created out of one or more existing governorates or two or more existing regions, and a governorate can also join an existing region to create a new region. A new region can be proposed by one third or more of the council members in each affected governorate plus 500 voters or by one tenth or more voters in each affected governorate. A referendum must then be held within three months, which requires a simple majority in favour to pass. In the event of competing proposals, the multiple proposals are put to a ballot and the proposal with the most supporters is put to the referendum. In the event of an affirmative referendum a Transitional Legislative Assembly is elected for one year, which has the task of writing a constitution for the Region, which is then put to a referendum requiring a simple majority to pass. The President, Prime Minister and Ministers of the region are elected by simple majority, in contrast to the Iraqi Council of Representatives which requires two thirds support.[15]
Low Arab Sunni turnout threatened the legitimacy of the election, which was as low as 2% in Anbar province. More than 100 armed attacks on polling places took place, killing at least 44 people (including nine suicide bombers) across Iraq, including at least 20 in Baghdad.
The elections took place under a list system, whereby voters chose from a list of parties and coalitions. 230 seats were apportioned among Iraq's 18 governorates based on the number of registered voters in each as of the January 2005 elections, including 59 seats for Baghdad Governorate.[17] The seats within each governorate were allocated to lists through a system of Proportional Representation. An additional 45 "compensatory" seats were allocated to those parties whose percentage of the national vote total (including out of country votes) exceeds the percentage of the 275 total seats that they have been allocated. Women were required to occupy 25% of the 275 seats.[18] The change in the voting system gave more weight to Arab Sunni voters, who make up most of the voters in several provinces. It was expected that these provinces would thus return mostly Sunni Arab representatives, after most Sunnis boycotted the last election.
Turnout was high (79.6%). The White House was encouraged by the relatively low levels of violence during polling,[19] with one insurgent group making good on a promised election day moratorium on attacks, even going so far as to guard the voters from attack.[20] President Bush frequently pointed to the election as a sign of progress in rebuilding Iraq. However, post-election violence threatened to plunge the nation into civil war, before the situation began to calm in 2007. The election results themselves produced a shaky coalition government headed by Nouri al-Maliki.
The election was rife with controversy.[21] Prior to the election, the Supreme Court in Iraq ruled that the existing electoral law/rule was unconstitutional,[22] and a new elections law made changes in the electoral system.[23] On 15 January 2010, the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) banned 499 candidates from the election due to alleged links with the Ba'ath Party.[24] Before the start of the campaign on 12 February 2010, IHEC confirmed that most of the appeals by banned candidates had been rejected and 456 of the initially banned candidates would not be allowed to run for the election.[25] There were numerous allegations of fraud,[26][27] and a recount of the votes in Baghdad was ordered on 19 April 2010.[28] On May 14, IHEC announced that after 11,298 ballot boxes had been recounted, there was no sign of fraud or violations.[citation needed]
The new parliament opened on 14 June 2010.[29] After months of fraught negotiations, an agreement was reached on the formation of a new government on November 11.[30] Talabani would continue as president, Al-Maliki would stay on as prime minister and Allawi would head a new security council.
Parliamentary elections were held in Iraq on 30 April 2014. The elections decided the 328 members of the Council of Representatives who will in turn elect the Iraqi President and Prime Minister.
During the regime of Saddam Hussein (1979–2003), several Iraqi opposition groups created a quota system by which Sunni Islamic, Shia Islamic, Kurdish and other religious or ethnic groups would be proportionally represented in a future new government. The U.S. in July 2003 selected the members of the Iraqi Governing Council, the forerunner of the first post–Hussein sovereign Iraqi (interim) government, according to that ethno-sectarian quota system.[36]
Also in 2003, a "pact" (muhasasa ta’ifa) was struck by "the elite", holding that after a national election, the winning parties divide the ministerial positions in direct relationship to their success at the ballot box.[37] After 2003, a second agreement (muhasasa) was made, holding that ministries and their budgets and other political positions must be proportionally placed under the "control" of "religious [or sectarian or ethnic] groups", "depending mostly on a group’s size", presuming such "groups" to be fully represented by one or several parties or lists taking part in the elections,[38] or that national governments should "represent the different ethnic, religious and sectarian identities that make up the Iraqi society", presuming that such "identities" are expressed or represented by existing political parties.[39] Such agreements between members of the elite to collude in order to avoid competition, improve their own profits, and dominate the market (of voters in a democracy), have been labeled "elite cartel".[39] The political parties themselves, once they win any ministry through the muhasasa system, benefit financially from state contracts awarded by them to companies run by their party members (see below, section Clientelism, patronage) what makes it even harder for them to step out of the muhasasa arrangements.[37] Or, as a researcher phrased it in 2020: "Such elite pacts are notoriously resistant to reform, particularly if any proposed change is perceived to undermine elite interests (…)".[40]
Although the system functions informally, a group of Norwegian researchers in late 2020 asserted—while citing other researchers but not a basic source—that 54% of the ministry posts would 'normally' go to the Shia, 24% to the Sunni, 18% to the Kurds, and 4% to minorities including the Christians.[41] They suggested that the muhasasa system leads to "a closed system of elite rule… recycling the political elites irrespective of their performance", not urging or inciting the Iraqi politicians to act transparently or accountably or to respond to citizen demands and deliver benefits to the Iraqi population as a whole, but instead making them easily susceptible to corruption, nepotism, clientelism and patronage while focusing on their own (group's) interests and (elite's) survival and consolidation.[41]
This muhasasa elite cartel (and connected problems) led to massive protests in Iraq in 2011, 2012–2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019–2021. Analysts have seen this muhasasa system to exist until at least late 2020.[42] The Abdul Mahdi Government of 2018 broke with elements of muhasasa. Although his anti-muhasasaSadrist Movement retained plurality in the 2021 election, inability to form a government eventually led to the party's withdrawal from Parliament, allowing the rival parties to form another muhasasa-based government.[43]
Incompetent government
Those two muhasasa agreements in and after 2003 (see above) had the effect that, starting with the first post–2003 Iraqi government after elections in 2006, if a party "controlled" a ministry, it appointed also the top positions in their civil services to their party followers and faction members;[37] also the positions for senior public service were distributed on the basis of "ethnic, religious and/or party affiliation" rather than merit,[44] professional competence or experience.[39] This incompetence caused mismanagement in the successive Iraqi governments of Al-Maliki (2006–2014), Al-Abadi (2014–2018),[45][40] and also Abdul-Mahdi (2018–2020),[42][37] leading to hundreds of billions of dollars being wasted on failed projects and the neglect of electricity networks, the transportation sector, economic legislation, and other infrastructure,[45] as well as citizen demands not being responded to.[40] Such incompetence – next to other forms of political turmoil like corruption (see next subsection) and instability – is considered by many analysts to have also fostered the rise of ISIL, in 2014.[46] (During the formation of the Abdul Mahdi Government in 2018, this new prime minister attempted to break through the traditional muhasasa procedures, but there's no clear information as to how far he succeeded in that, or whether the Iraqi governments since 2018 worked more competently or less corruptly.)
Clientelism, patronage
Civil services being staffed – under these muhasasa agreements (see above) – according to party loyalty had the effect that state contracts would only be awarded by them to "party-affiliated companies and businesspeople",[39] who would be paid handsomely for their contracted services; even if they hardly, or not at all, actually delivered those services. Such manner of spending state finances has been labeled governmental contracting fraud and structural political corruption: not the general public but privileged companies were being served by the government.[37] This culture of clientelism[45] and "systemic political patronage"[47][36] produced a new class of entrepreneurs, getting rich through close relations with government officials and their lush government contracts.[45] Meanwhile, politicians themselves lived in wealth, self-enrichment and massive personal protection.[48][36]
Stagnant economy
The infrastructure not being maintained or modernized due to governmental incompetence and mismanagement (see above) severely hampered the development of private economic activity, therefore meaning the private sector could not absorb the half million of young people entering the job market every year.[45] This muhasasa-style 'cartel' government, due to its lack of accountability – politicians being "recycled ... irrespective of their performance" – provided too little incentives for those politicians to build a diversified and competitive economy or "deliver benefits to the population".[40]
M. Ismail Marcinkowski, Religion and Politics in Iraq. Shiite Clerics between Quietism and Resistance, with a foreword by Professor Hamid Algar of the University of California at Berkeley. Singapore: Pustaka Nasional, 2004 (ISBN9971-77-513-1)
