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STATEMENT BY
MARINA OTTAWAY
SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEMOCRACY AND RULE OF LAW PROJECT
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

 BEFORE THE
HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

  OCTOBER 29, 2003    
 

The stabilization of Iraq depends not only on progress in re-establishing security, but also on the formation of an Iraqi government enjoying domestic and international legitimacy. The installation of such government would reduce opposition to the American presence among Iraqis, prove to the world that the United States will not stay in Iraq as an occupying power longer than absolutely necessary, and facilitate the introduction of political and economic reforms that can only be undertaken by a sovereign Iraqi government. In helping set up an elected, fully sovereign Iraqi government, however, the United States is caught between the need for speed and the need to allow sufficient time for the Iraqis to negotiate extensively and reach an agreement on the many controversial issues involved in designing a new political system. As the United States' own historical experience shows, crafting a political system that reconciles the demands and allays the fears of different groups is a demanding and time consuming task.

The administration still hopes that an Iraqi constitution can be written and approved in six months and elections held in about a year. This quick process also responds to growing Iraqi and international pressure for a speedy transfer of sovereignty from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi government, as well as to domestic pressure to limit the mounting financial and human costs of the occupation.  While the desire for moving so quickly is understandable, encouraging such an accelerated process would be highly dangerous. The experience of many other countries emerging from civil conflict or forcible regime change shows that hurriedly organized elections often create more problems than they solve. Much more thorough political preparation is needed for elections to produce meaningful and lasting results.

Undoubtedly Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority have the  technical resources to rush a constitution into place and race through the logistical challenges involved in setting up elections.  But short-circuiting the process of domestic discussion, negotiation, and consensus-building that should accompany the crafting of a new Iraqi political system would be unwise. It would likely result in political institutions and processes that many Iraqis feel little connection to and that do not command the loyalty or respect of some key political actors.  Worse still, early elections might provoke precisely the sort of civil conflict that the United States hopes so much to avoid.

Despite these dangers, delaying the elections is not a viable option.  The U.S. government decided early on after ousting Saddam Hussein that a transfer of sovereignty back to an Iraqi government would take place only once elections are held.  As a result, the election timetable is hostage to the inexorably growing pressure for sovereignty.  It did not have to be that way.  Other countries emerging from conflict and regime change under some kind of external occupying or administering force have regained domestic sovereignty before having elections.  Afghanistan is just one example.  After the defeat of the Taliban in October 2001, Afghanistan quickly gained its own interim administration, led by President Karzai, and a detailed transition roadmap, finalized in Bonn in December 2001.  With sovereignty and a roadmap for transition already in hand, Afghans have been willing to wait for elections.  The planned elections of next year will take place close to three years after the end of the war.  In Iraq, however, the United States made a different choice, and it would be both difficult and unwise to go back on the commitment to transfer full sovereignty only to an elected Iraqi government.

With elections the gate to sovereignty in Iraq, there is only one way to reconcile the imperative of holding early elections with the need for a lengthy process of political consensus building and institutional creation.  This is to limit the first phase of constitution writing to an interim constitution and hold elections under that interim constitution for a constituent assembly and an interim government of national unity.  This would produce an elected government to which the United States could hand over sovereignty and create an institutional framework to carry out a longer-term, less hurried effort to write a permanent constitution and create permanent democratic institutions. Even with more time Iraqis may not reach the compromises necessary to make a democratic system work.  The history of Iraq is one of political strife kept in check only by authoritarian governments capable of strong-arming all existing political forces into submission.  This is not a particularly good starting point for building democracy, but it is the reality on the ground, one that makes it all the more important not to rush the process.

The Danger of Premature Elections

Rushing to elections in countries emerging from conflict or sudden regime collapse often prevents the necessary process of negotiation over the basic political rules and bargains for a new democratic system.  Holding elections without a solid underlying political consensus on the rules and substance of a new political system presents at least two major dangers.

First, some of the major political forces may lack confidence that if they do poorly in the elections their basic interests will still be protected by the system. They may refuse to accept the results unless they win.  Several examples of such rejection of results occurred in the 1990s, with different but equally undesirable outcomes.  After a long civil war in Angola and then an uncertain peace agreement, the two rival armed movements, disguised as political parties but still armed, agreed to participate in elections in 1992.  Each side assumed it would win; neither was seriously committed to a democratic process.  International technocrats under UN supervision performed logistical miracles in pulling off the elections, for naught.  The losing party launched another military offensive within days of the elections and ten more years of civil war followed.

In Cambodia, opposition parties emerged victorious from UN-sponsored elections held two years after the 1991 peace agreement that brought the long-running civil war to an end.  But the incumbent leader, Hun Sen, refused to accept the results.  Still in control of the bureaucracy and the military, he forced the parliament to accept the formation of a government headed by two prime ministers-himself and the head of the winning party.  Before long, however, he grew discontented with sharing power and seized full power militarily. 

And in Liberia, elections imposed by the international community in 1997 reconfirmed the dominant position of Charles Taylor, the victorious leader of the armed group that had devastated the country in years of war.  Liberians gave Taylor a majority vote not because they liked him but because they realized he would not allow himself to be sidelined by an electoral loss and would plunge the country back into war in response to an unfavorable showing.  Elections that promised at least stability and perhaps the start of a political liberalization process brought neither.  Taylor ruled repressively and opposition forces returned to fighting.  The country lapsed again into disastrous civil war, prompting recently another round of international intervention, led by West African peace keepers, with minor U.S. support.

The second danger of early elections is that they can increase the power of radical, uncompromising groups.  Such political forces tend to be the first to organize in post-conflict situations and do well in hurried elections.  Citizens divided along ethnic or religious lines are often wary of the ability of a fragile new political system to protect their core identity-based interests and vote for radicals who promise to defend such interests by any means.

Bosnia is a telling example in this regard.  At the insistence of the international powers occupying the country after the 1995 Dayton Accords, Bosnia held elections just nine months after the peace agreement was reached.  In those elections, which are now widely viewed by political analysts as a setback for reconciliation and democratization, radical nationalist forces on all three sides of the ethnic divide defeated more moderate groups.  New, more moderate parties had insufficient time to organize. Voters, still unsure whether the new system would really protect them, rewarded the radicals.

The dangers of rejection and of radicalization are present in Iraq.  The most visible groups on the emergent political scene are those with clear ethnic or regional identities.  In a hurried political campaign the more radicalized groups and the sharper messages are likely to stand out.  Other groups, such as the new moderate, secular organizations and the formerly exiled organizations that the United States has hoped would become major domestic forces, are only just beginning to develop their base.  Moreover, the major groups that have already emerged may not easily abide by elections results if those results thwart their ambitions or exacerbate their grievances.  The Kurdish parties have governed a virtually independent region of Iraq for a decade and would likely be loath to submit to any elected government that attempted to curb their autonomy.  The Shi'ia clerics already have a wide political base and a surging sense of political destiny, one they might be unwilling to abandon if electoral results did not give them what they want.  The Sunnis elite, struggling with the calamitous loss of their dominant position, are unlikely to be very happy with what elections will bring them.

Crafting a Political System in Iraq

In building a new political system, Iraqis will have to reach agreement on an almost overwhelming number of difficult, divisive political issues.  The most important and divisive, but by no means the only, issues that will arise in writing a constitution include the following:

• In devising a federal system for Iraq, which many groups favor, critical decisions will be necessary about the boundaries of the new internal states and the degree of autonomy they possess.  The Kurds have already drafted a constitutional proposal calling for a federation composed of one Kurdish and one Arab state, with significant autonomy for the states.  Other Iraqis want to see states with less autonomy and with boundaries set in accordance with population size and geography, disregarding ethnic and religious lines.  Still others would be interested in boundaries that maximize Shi'ia power, or enhance Sunni influence, or protect minorities.

• A fundamental choice will need to be made whether to have a presidential or a parliamentary system.  The presidential system would be in keeping with the strong executive tradition of Iraq and other Arab countries but would raise the specter of a return to strongman rule.  A parliamentary system would be less threatening but more alien, and could be more easily paralyzed by dissension and instability. 

• Equally hard and contentious will be the decision whether to incorporate, and if so, how to incorporate into Iraq's new constitution and legal institutions the principles derived from the vast body of Islamic laws and interpretation knows as the sharia.

In addition to constitutional issues, Iraq will also face major choices in establishing the core laws and procedures necessary for the construction of a democratic electoral process, including the following:

• In adopting a new electoral system, should Iraq opt for a system of proportional representation, for single member districts, or for a mixed system?  Proportional representation is favorable to small parties and can potentially allow better representation of national minorities. It also can lead to unstable legislatures.  With their winner-take-all quality, single member constituencies tend to eliminate small parties and render it more difficult to achieve representation for minorities.  But they are often relatively stable and create stronger ties between elected representatives and their constituents.

• In writing a law on political parties there will arise critical issues about their registration. For example, should the registration of parties with a religious identity be allowed, creating the possibility of an Islamist victory or at least a strong Islamist voice in government?  Or should such parties be outlawed as incompatible with liberal democracy, leading a part of the population to feel disenfranchised?

• Establishing a voter registration system will be more than a technical challenge; it will require choices with important political implications.  Ideally, the registration of voters should be preceded by a national census and the issuance of identity cards and voter registration cards to all Iraqis.  But a census before next summer is out of the question, partly because of time, partly because census taking in countries with a heterogeneous population and poor record keeping is a politically charged exercise that can upset carefully constructed balances.  Though countries facing transitional elections often do register voters without a prior census, the result is frequently controversial. Minorities complain they are under represented and opposition groups blame their poor performance on inaccurate voter lists.

These myriad constitutional, legal, and procedural issues will inevitably arise in crafting a new political system in Iraq. They would be contentious in any context.  They will be particularly difficult to solve in Iraq given its ethnic and religious divisions, its history of conflict and repression, and its lack of experience with even partial efforts to democratize.  This does not mean that reaching consensus is impossible and that Iraq can never be democratic.  It only means that these issues need to be thoroughly aired and compromises must be negotiated at length. Thus expectations for a rapid process are not realistic.  Fundamental issues cannot all be settled within the next nine months or even the next year no matter how hard both Iraqis and the CPA work.  Indeed the projected timetable is extremely short even by the standards of the typical hurried post-conflict election, which usually takes about two years to organize.

The Value of the Provisional

Under these circumstances, there are only two ways to ready Iraq for elections by the second half of 2004.  One way is to treat the process of political construction and preparation as a technical rather than a political challenge, keeping most decisions in the hands of very limited circle of Iraqi elites and CPA officials and minimizing wider political negotiations and public participation in the process.  Paul Bremer promised that "the constitution will be widely circulated, discussed and debated among the Iraqi people" and ratified in a referendum. Yet, it is impossible that the constitution could be written, widely debated within Iraq, and voted on in the six months of the timetable for the constitution Secretary of State Colin Powell still hopes can be met. Given its near complete authority over political and legal matters, the CPA could give U.S.-supported aid technocrats leeway to race the country through the logistical preparations for elections.  Constitutions, electoral systems, rules for the registration of parties, voter registration mechanisms and all the rest can be pulled ready-made off the shelf.  But no matter what miracles of organization and efficiency outside experts manage to accomplish, Iraq will not be politically ready to adopt a permanent constitution and hold elections leading to the formation of a government in which only the winners participate.  There are no technical shortcuts to the necessarily lengthy processes of political compromise, consensus building, and civic education. Overlooking this fact could lead to outcomes similar to those witnessed  in Cambodia, Angola, Liberia or Bosnia.

The CPA should therefore pursue a different course.  The constitution writing beginning now should be limited to producing an interim constitution or basic law. The document would contain a broad commitment to democratic principles and respect for human rights; institutionally, however, it would only provide a minimalist and temporary framework needed to elect an interim government of national unity that would rule the country for three years, and a constituent assembly that would oversee the writing of a permanent constitution in the same period.  Under this approach the United States would fulfill its commitment to transfer sovereignty to an elected government in the second half of 2004, but avoid many of the risks of early elections.  The elections would be for significantly lower stakes than those currently being discussed. Yet the process would create nascent democratic institutions that would have the legitimacy and the time necessary to take the Iraqi political class and the society through the inevitably difficult process of settling the many choices and dilemmas that arise in constructing a permanent democratic system.

The interim constitution should be kept as simple as possible.  It should establish for the three-year period of interim government rule a unitary rather than a federal system. This is not because a unitary system is the best for a democratic Iraq but because the contentious issues of federalism cannot be quickly solved.  Preferably, the interim constitution  should provide for a parliamentary system rather than a presidential one, with proportional representation.  This would avoid the dangerous winner-take-all quality of an early election for a strong presidential post and would make the constituent assembly as inclusive as possible.  The registration of political parties should be kept quite open to encourage new organizations to form and to dispel fears that registration rules are being used to exclude some groups.  Voter registration should proceed using a very simple method, such as election day  finger marking, to encourage a large turnout and make as many Iraqis as possible feel they are part of the process.

Establishing an interim constitution and an interim government before moving to a permanent constitution and permanent political institutions would mean deliberately  postponing many of the most difficult political choices facing Iraq.  It would not mean sweeping them under the rug, as would happen if a permanent constitution were quickly put into place and aid technocrats took responsibility for solving the major issues of an electoral process.

An objection that has been raised against the idea of putting the writing of the constitution in the hands of an elected assembly is that this body would be dominated by shi'ias, who constitute 60 percent of the population, and that this would lead to the transformation of Iraq into a Iran-style theocracy. But not all Shi'ias support radical Islamists-a poll conducted in August by Zogby International in four cities indicated that only 27 percent of Shi'ias polled favored an Islamic government. Furthermore, a constitution is never approved by a simple majority, but by a qualified majority, and this would make it even more difficult for radicals to have their way.

The approach suggested here does not guarantee that when Iraqis eventually confront and try to solve the challenges of building democratic institutions they will  reach happy compromises that all major political actors can accept.  But it does increase the probability that this will happen.  In the end, some groups will lose out, as some always do in a democratic process.  The losers are more likely to accept such an outcome, however, if the issues have been the subject of real negotiations and handled within the framework of institutions - such as a constituent assembly-that were chosen by Iraqis rather than the CPA.

The Bush administration is understandably anxious to have an elected government in Baghdad, both so it can claim success in establishing democracy and begin to implement an exit strategy.  But as has been painfully learned in many countries around the world, holding elections does not a democracy make.  In some cases, elections are not even the beginning of democracy. Elections are a necessary part of the process of building new democratic institutions.  But if elections are rushed and held without adequate political preparation, they can provoke political conflict, distort emergent processes of political representation, and aggravate rather than heal societal divisions.  The idea of a slower transition with interim steps and provisional institutions may not seems as satisfying or decisive as a democratic big bang.  And it may well be resisted by those Iraqi political actors who stand to benefit from a rapid process that rewards those already in a favored political position.  But a more gradual process, rooted in extended negotiation and consensus-building on the part of major domestic political actors, as well as broader public debate and participation, corresponds to lessons from other countries and the real needs of Iraq.