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Old Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, hated clubs. Baathi party members grew
like weeds amongst any association. Most authoritarian regimes constantly
pressure to politicize intermediate institutions. Intermediate institutions
are those organizations existing between the government and the individual:
sporting clubs, fraternal organizations, private and professional associations,
etc. and a plethora of other groups built around shared interests: Shared
interests that, in old Iraq, could not exist absent the aims of the Baathists.
Religion is too often politicized. Islam recognizes no distinction between
church and state. In its extremer form, Islam comes with its own law code.
Religion may be the opiate of the masses, according to Karl Marx, but
autocrats can't leave it to its own devices. Every authoritarian regime
in the 20th century, from China to Iraq has controlled freedom of religious
association, by insinuating party loyalists into formal gatherings. Marxism
maintains that everything is political, hence no association can be free
from political influence. Dictators find this logic efficient; granting
no freedom from the reach of the state.
So the individual confronts the single party state without the buffer
of nonpolitical clubs. There is nothing in the middle if intermediate
institutions are absent. If there is nothing in the middle, there is no
area that experts now call "civil society".
So to Iraq: It needs to be rebuilt. Bridges and water systems are easily
understood. Engineers design and build them. Money pays for the steel
and the crews. Straightforward stuff. It is possible too to draw charts
of organizational structures, with neat little boxes indicating tasks,
etc. and build a local administration; boring but necessary. Still this
touches the average Iraqi only coldly and at a distance. The real task
in reconstruction is to build civil society. To do this intermediate institutions
are essential. The question now is how to encourage the creation of clubs
and associations: Those places that can only exist because the inquisition
of the State overlooks them.
Object to the idea of a king?
Consider the countries surrounding
Iraq.
Iraq is all too familiar with an excessively inquisitorial executive
branch of government. Most Near Eastern dictators command presidential
positions. Elections tend to reinforce their despotism. Any new regime
in Iraq needs a diluted executive branch in a federal system. A split
executive with a figurehead as monarch, with many ceremonial and few real
powers, joined to an elected prime minister wielding de facto authority
may address the concern. Each leader would lead an upper and lower house,
respectively, of elected representatives. The 18 existing provinces can
serve as democratic units, dispersing the influence of the three major
ethnic groups: Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni. Each province could elect at
least two representatives, regardless of population concentrations. They
would sit in the upper house. The lower house, the domain of the prime
minister, could return elected representatives purely on the basis of
demographics. A bicameral government provides representation to Iraqis
without permitting ethnic strife to dominate the political realm. It complicates
and abstracts tribal loyalties while permitting their limited expression.
Object to the idea of king? Considered the countries surrounding Iraq.
The most democratically inclined are all monarchies: Bahrain, Kuwait,
Jordan, the UAE. Contrast these with Syria, Iran and Egypt: Abolished
monarchies yielded to repressive dictatorships. A monarch in power also
serves to assuage Saudi concerns about abolition of royal families and
presents a direction in which democratic reform is possible.
Religious leaders, accustomed to wielding public influence, could have
representation in the upper house. For centuries Anglican divines sat
as the Lords Spiritual in the English House of Lords doing little violence
to an unwritten constitution. In the Islamic context with no history of
pure secular church and state division this might serve as a functional
compromise.
A gaggle of voices cavil that Iraq is not ready for democracy, but if
Mali can manage democracy, why not Iraq? If not now, after 10,000 years
of civilization, when will Iraq be ready? Mongolia is a democracy, in
the shadow of its heritage under the great Khan. There are enormous riches
in oil at the disposal of a new Iraqi government. Iraq can certainly afford
to try democracy. Few countries are poised to be as rich. Such riches
can aid in rebuilding civil society. There are many problems, of course,
but that is not a reason to fail to try democracy. There are always reasons
not to attempt democracy, but some system must replace the mess of the
failed Baathists and it might as well give the people of Iraq a chance
to choose their own destiny.
So what do clubs have to do with this? Intermediate bodies inculcate
an understanding of how to work in groups to accomplish ends beyond the
narrow interests of the individual or family. These groups offer an example
of how democratic government works in a nonpolitical situation. Such knowledge
is imperative. The lightning of liberation has struck Iraq and its future
vests in the small hands of man. May they be clubbable men.
--James Clark
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