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    Four Models of Democracy:

    Civic Republicanism and the Emerging Iraq

    Michael A. Cole

    2005

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    Two lessons of recent democratization movements are that liberal democratic

    regimes are value-charged and that failure to balance the competing demands of culture

    and democracy lead to dysfunction and illegitimacy. As the number of nominal

    democratic governments grows so too do descriptions of democracy divorced from

    Western liberalism. Iraqs longstanding religious, ethnic and tribal conflicts were

    suppressed by decades of authoritarianism, and now manifest themselves in the debates

    over what Iraq will be, how it will be governed, and by whom. Democracys emergence

    as Iraqs form of government begins a complex process of development. Four models of

    democracy liberal democracy, civic republicanism, deliberative democracy and radical

    democracy are presented. Each is distinctly Western, but they vary in their ability to

    mould themselves to the contours of various political cultures. Civic republicanism holds

    the greatest promise for Iraq for its ability to capitalize on the particular characters of

    Iraqs peoples and build unity around a core of malleable ideals.

    LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

    Late twentieth and early twenty-first century Western politics is characterized as a

    hybrid of democratic forms, but liberalism has assumed such prominence in Western

    democracies that its practitioners often do not distinguish it as one particular democratic

    theory among several. If they do, then they often assert it is both superior to others and

    universally applicable. This is particularly true in the United States, where the emphasis

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    on individuals civil rights and civil liberties has dominated decades of debate and given

    prominence to the language of liberalism.1 The briefest sketch shows that liberalism is

    neither universally applicable nor satisfactory for the attainment of all conceivable,

    legitimate objectives of a democracy.

    The liberal tradition begins from an explication of the natural condition from

    which people escape by joining in communities and constructing governments, thereby

    mitigating the danger in nature and obeying its laws.

    The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and

    reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind that being all equal and

    independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty or possessions

    Every one is bound [by nature and as functionaries of the Divine] to preserve

    himself so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not into

    competition, ought he as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may

    not, unless it be to do justice to an offender, take away, or impair the life, liberty, or

    what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb or goods of

    another.2

    The unit of liberal politics is the individual in a position of unalterable, natural freedom

    and equality with others. Individuals are credited with capacities for rational thought,

    choice, and freedom of conscience. They are granted freedom from coercion and are

    presumed to use their liberty and intelligence to pursue their interests. Lockes reference

    to life, liberty, and estate, concerns not only material property (estate), but also

    the property each has in his own Person.3

    Individuals create government in order to

    protect the rights and liberties to which they are naturally entitled,4

    and the institution

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    and defense of rights and liberties is the sole purpose of legitimate government.5

    Legitimacy is a precondition for liberal governance; it is a function of the consent of the

    governed; and the same failures and violations of government that undermine legitimacy

    are acknowledged to be causes of complaint and even revolution by the governed.

    Governments limited ends imply its necessarily limited means. Liberalism accepts

    constrained, divided government, and active citizens in competition with each other for

    resources,6 as tools to maximize individuals liberty.

    Although it suggests no particular political institutions or social movements,

    liberalism lends itself to employment by many of each. The values contained in John

    Lockes Second Treatise direct the forms assumed by liberal movements and

    governments as disparate as feminism, the American founding, and the Iraqs political

    development. For example, Martha Nussbaum somewhat controversially conceives of

    liberalism as a salient feature of feminism for its idea of the equal worth of human

    beings as such, in virtue of their basic human capacities for choice and reasoning The

    crucial addition liberal feminism makes is to add sex to that list of morally irrelevant

    characteristics [alongside rank, caste, and birth].7

    In this feminist model, liberalism

    serves to right past wrongs and empower individuals.

    The liberal insists that the goal of politics should be the amelioration of lives taken

    one by one and seen as separate ends, rather than the amelioration of the organic

    whole or the totality. I argue that this is a very good position for women to

    embrace, seeing that women have all too often been regarded not as ends but as

    means to the ends of others.8

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    Writing for The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton addressed in distinctly liberal

    language the hazards of inequality and conflict, and the capacity of citizens to guide

    politics and as act as arbiters of legitimacy.

    It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and

    example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really

    capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or

    whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on

    accident and force Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new

    Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious

    interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may

    hazard a diminution of [their] power and the perverted ambition of another class

    of men, who will hope to aggrandize themselves.9

    Madisons response to the problem is an expression of liberal values.

    There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its

    causes; the other by controlling its effects. There are again two methods of

    removing the causes of faction: the one by destroying the liberty which is essential

    to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same

    passions, and the same interests. It could never be more truly said than of the first

    remedy that it was worse than the disease It could not be less folly to abolish

    liberty, which is essential to political life The second expedient is as

    impracticable as the first would be unwise The diversity in the faculties of men,

    from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a

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    uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of

    government.10

    The Founders resolved that individual liberty and limited government are beneficial.

    They adopted a framework of common procedures and mediated conflict to hamper

    excesses of power and capitalize upon competition. The civic republican, deliberative,

    and radical models of democracy would conceivably respond to feminism and the

    dangers of faction quite differently.

    Benjamin Barbers critique of liberalism reveals much of what lies beneath the

    democratic faade its practitioners have constructed over the centuries.

    Liberal democracy is based on premises that are genuinely liberal but that are

    not intrinsically democratic. Its conception of the individual and of individual

    interest undermines the democratic practices upon which both individuals and their

    interests depend. Liberal democracy is thus a thin democracy, one whose

    democratic values are prudential and thus provisional, optional and conditional

    From this precarious foundation, no firm theory of citizenship, participation, public

    goods, or civic virtue can be expected to arise.11

    The liberal conceptions of human nature, knowledge and politics emerge directly from

    liberal philosophys myth of the state of nature, yet the image of Man emerging alone and

    brutish from prehistory prior to civilization, political attachment, and the assertion of

    self-evident rights is rationally un-testable. The myth buttresses a system of rational

    conclusions that Barber calls grossly deficient as a model of political thinking.12

    In its most common forms, which Barber identifies as anarchism, realism, and

    minimalism, liberalism employs ideas about human nature, knowledge and politics that

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    are not conducive to participatory citizenship, dynamic communities, and advances in

    human understanding. Liberalism maintains a belief in the fundamental inability of the

    human beast to live at close quarters with members of its own species. All three [models]

    seek to structure human relations by keeping men apart rather than by bringing them

    together.13

    In its approach to knowledge, liberal philosophy adopts the Cartesian

    assumption that there exists a knowable independent ground an incorrigible first

    premise or antecedent reality from which the concepts, values, standards, and ends of

    political life can be derived by simple deduction.14

    Liberal philosophy pursues political

    knowledge as part of a quest for certainty, to render intelligibility absolute and justice

    incorrigible.15

    Determined to develop a politics of applied truth the liberal must

    find impossible routes from nowhere (antecedent reality) to somewhere (concrete human

    relations).16 Barber suggests that liberalism is rendered intellectually vacuous and

    unequal to the solution of real, human problems by this use of knowledge, and that

    political theorists should instead endeavor to render political life intelligible and

    political practice just.17

    The same critique of liberal political theory carries to its

    political activity. The liberal democratic view of human nature insists that the human

    condition necessarily entails a certain form of political life Liberal democratic politics

    is thus the logic of a certain radical individualism It is atomism wearing a social

    mask.18

    Consistent emphases on individualism, competition, and concern for theoretical

    salience in the liberal images of human nature, knowledge, and politics preclude rich

    democratic traditions conceived by alternative democratic models.

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    CIVIC REPUBLICANISM

    Civic republicanism diverges from the liberal tradition by reorienting itself with

    respect to the individual and the community and their relationship to each other, the

    powers and purpose of government, and by emphasizing the role of the citizen as the

    critical political actor. Like liberal philosophers before him, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

    conceives of individuals in the state of nature as free and equal, unencumbered except by

    ones force upon another to attain the necessities for living. Significantly, Rousseau

    mitigates liberals radical individualism by noting that man comes into the world as part

    of a family, and are therefore born into a social order writ-small. Similarly, departure

    from the state of nature exerts a socializing force on the individual.

    [The] passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces quite a

    remarkable change in man, for it substitutes justice for instinct in his behaviour and

    gives his actions a moral quality they previously lacked. Only then, when the voice

    of duty replaces physical impulse and right replaces appetite, does man, who had

    hitherto taken only himself into account, find himself forced to act upon other

    principles and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. His

    faculties are exercised and developed, his ideas are broadened, his feelings are

    ennobled, his entire soul is elevated19

    Entrance into society is not merely functional, but transformative; it is the process by

    which men become most distinctly human.

    In Rousseaus Social Contract, the political question is a familial question writ

    large.20 By entering the social compact,

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    Each of us places his person and all his power in common under the supreme

    direction of the general will; and as one receive each member as an indivisible part

    of the whole This act of association produces a moral and collective body

    composed of as many members as there are voices in the assembly, which receives

    from this same act its unity its life and its will.21

    The relationship between man and state is accurately characterized as an interaction, and

    not an exchange; each exerts a formative and empowering influence on the other, but the

    state is never the master and is always the servant,22

    as the citizen surrenders rights not to

    the government but to the body politic composed of his equals. The resulting sovereign

    power derives its legitimacy and solvency from the tacit, constant commitment of the

    citizenry. The sovereign power is absolute and demands obedience of the citizens from

    whom it receives authority. As the sovereign power is of the people, used to enforce the

    decisions of the general will composed of the whole citizenry, it can by definition never

    err.

    The regime with which citizens engaged in politics thus construed should govern

    themselves depends on the character of the state in question, provided conditions are met

    to maintain the balance of power and the quality of active citizenship. As there is an

    inverse relationship between the size of the state (by population) and the size of its

    government, it follows that small states should be governed by councils of as many

    citizens as is practicable, and large states will be governed by a few individuals. The

    same scale exists between the size of a state and the liberty of its citizens. Yet the

    sources of their power and legitimacy will remain the same. Representation, or

    government by proxy, is anathema to the Rousseauean republic. The laziness, greed and

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    cowardice Rousseau attributes to an inattentive citizenry are by definition the character of

    the state, which makes it vulnerable to corruption from within and invasion from without.

    As the best regime depends on the size of a people, the best government is defined by its

    inclination. The goal of political association is the preservation and prosperity of its

    members,23

    and government is secondarily instituted to achieve objectives defined by

    the general will. The government best able to meet these goals and still maintain civil

    and political liberty can be said to be the most appropriate and successful government.

    According to Aristotle, The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the

    institutions of social life are means to that end. It is only as participants in political

    association that we can realize our nature and fulfill our highest ends.24

    As was true in

    the Greek polis and in Rousseaus republic, Americas republican tradition demands of

    public life opportunities to substantively participate in self-governance and engage in

    vibrant communities. Michael Sandel notes the presence of anxiety in American politics

    despite the countrys apparent success and happiness, which he argues stems from the

    feeling that people are losing control of the forces governing their lives and that the moral

    fabric of community is unravelling,25

    but that the prevailing procedural republic founded

    on liberal political theory is ill-equipped to respond as needed. The challenges to

    American republicanism are the same Rousseau attributes to large states, and extension

    of government powers entailed therein is followed shortly by diminution of Americans

    liberty. The project of reopening public space for deliberation and participation is

    undertaken against the flow of powerful political and market forces whose interests lie in

    citizens privatism and acquiescence, and it follows the greater task (pursued throughout

    American history) of developing citizens capacities of character, judgment and concern

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    for the whole26

    without resorting to coercion. The much broader project of defining and

    promoting civic virtue, as Benjamin Rush said, to save American republicanism from

    the deadly effects of [the] private pursuits of happiness,27

    may occur only in the context

    of rescinding the procedural republic, in which the right is promoted prior to the good.

    Clearly, the challenges faced by civic republicanism are as imposing in practice as in

    theory.

    DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

    Central to each model of democracy is the idea that people, whether radically

    individualistic or intimately tied to communities, possess the capacity for reason and the

    inclination to pursue either personal or shared interests through political engagement.

    Deliberation at all levels, between all participants in public life, about all issues of public

    concern is among the most basic activities citizens can engage in to affect governance. It

    is essential for legitimacy, and conducive to improved democratic functioning.

    Roughly half of eligible American voters regularly choose not to vote; a growing

    number of people express distrust for their representatives and dissatisfaction with

    governments activities; consecutive presidents appear not to place public engagement on

    their agendas.28

    The growing gap between citizens and their government suggests

    negative consequences for the legitimacy of the American regime, which depends not on

    acquiescence but on the consent of participating citizens expressing the public will.

    Deliberation benefits the development of functional communities by bringing together

    people from disparate corners of society to discuss issues and identify commonalities; it

    acts as a conduit for new solutions to public problems to enter the discourse and receive

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    action; and deliberation has been shown to lead to increased knowledge and participation,

    all of which serve public interests. In Politics for People, David Matthews argues that

    politics is not purely instrumental. Politics is a creative activity in that it has to do with

    building they kind of community and country we want Politics is about

    transformation, not just transactions.29

    This differs from Rousseaus models of

    decision-making because it peels away actors particularities to uncover a common good,

    as opposed to a common will; but it agrees with the civic republicans image of

    participation as a transformative activity by which private actors become public

    contributors.

    RADICAL DEMOCRACY

    Benjamin Barbersstrong democracy attempts to formulate a remedy to the

    breakdown of community, citizenship, legitimacy, and government effectiveness the

    preceding models identify as a growing danger to American democracys solvency.

    Building from the Rousseauean belief that politics can be transformative, and the hopeful

    Jeffersonian belief in human potential, Barber proposes a program of reforms and new

    initiatives which have as their object the extension of democracy into most corners of the

    lives of an increasingly competent citizenry. A central premise of his model is that

    politics is autonomous of any preconceptual frame, which might otherwise color the

    deliberative, participatory process of decision-making at the core of his prescriptions.

    Perhaps most useful contribution of Strong Democracy is a reformulation of

    politics and an alternative to liberalisms preconceptual frame. The definition ofthat

    which is politicalis too often missing from works of political theory. Very briefly,

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    Politics is what men do when metaphysics fails; it is not metaphysics reified as a

    constitution.30

    The political condition is engendered by history, circumstance, and context The

    citizen wishes in any case only to act rightly, not to know for certain; only to

    choose reasonably, not to reason scientifically; only to overcome conflict and

    secure transient peace, not to discover eternity; only to cooperate with others, not to

    achieve moral one-ness; only to formulate common causes, not obliterate all

    differences.31

    Barbers radical democracy consists of the practical solutions determined by reasoning

    persons to be best. By un-mediating government and institutionalizing substantive forms

    of democratic talk, decision-making and action, Barber says, Strong democracy looks to

    wage a second war for suffrage, a second campaign to win the substance of citizenship

    promised but never achieved by the winning of the vote32

    CIVIC REPUBLICANISM IN IRAQ

    Iraqs political troubles have reflected those of its neighbors for centuries as it has

    changed from an unruly outpost of the Ottomon Empire to a center of Pan-Arabism, and

    finally to the battlefield in a conflict between irredentist extremism and modernizing

    forces of democracy. The dual image of Iraqs conflict as both internal and external

    carries important consequences for the kind of form its politics may assume in the near

    future. Democracy offers Iraq an alternative to the autocratic rule of its past which need

    not contradict its native political traditions, but the disjointed model applied first by the

    occupation authority and then by Iraqs National Assembly more readily facilitates

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    elections than it can foster civic life. Liberalism is weighted with values that conflict

    with Iraqs prominent Islamic and tribal traditions. Civic republicanism holds promise

    for its ability to capitalize on the native character of Iraqs people, and channel their

    differences into cooperation. The distinction is reflected in small ways by ongoing work

    in Iraqs political development.

    As is often true, particularly in the non-Western world, history is essential to

    understanding Iraq. Intellectual exchange between the West and the Near East was so

    constant and of such importance through the fourteenth century that the distinction

    between them was more artificial than real. It was not until the sixteenth century, as the

    West pursued its Renaissance and the East entered the Ottomon age, that their paths

    diverged.33

    By the end of the eighteenth century, the Near East had changed little, as its

    wealth and achievements were concentrated in Ottomon hands, and its imperial lands

    remained much as they were for centuries. In the territory now known as Iraq, the period

    was marked by consistent conflict as the peoples loyalties were divided between the

    Shiite attachment to Persia and the Sunni orientation to the holy cities Mecca and

    Medina. Catholic missionaries and British educators entered Iraq in the late seventeenth

    century, specifically Basra and Baghdad, but exerted little influence until the resurgence

    of East-West contacts across the region following Napoleons entrance into Egypt

    (bearing Arabic-script printing presses) in the early nineteenth century.

    Iraqs relationship with the West from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth

    century was characterized by hostility alongside adoption of Western political forms,

    particularly nationalism and democracy. The 1920 rebellion against the British by the

    tribes along the lower Euphrates River at the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf was

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    followed by the imposition of the Empires indirect rule through King Faysal. In 1927,

    the British recognized Iraqs independence and pursued a series of treaties for trade and

    development. In 1958, King Faysal II was assassinated and a socialist republic was

    instituted. The rise of Pan-Islam and Pan-Arabism, or Baathism, was pursued as a

    means to oppose Western intrusions, while, paradoxically, adopting Western political

    models and ideologies. Samuel Huntingtons democracy paradox is a notable modern

    observation of the phenomenon. It forms a significant piece of the puzzle represented by

    Arab democracy. Adoption by non-Western societies of Western democratic

    institutions encourages and gives access to power to nativist and anti-Western political

    movements.34

    The democracy paradox is everywhere at work in Iraq with important

    consequences for the future character of Iraqi politics. As democracy does not

    necessarily bring Western values, and as liberal democracy is likely to be rejected by

    Iraqs native political centers, the democracy paradox indicates something of Iraqs likely

    course.

    Native values and power centers are a force to be contended with in Iraq.

    Throughout the late twentieth century, political democracy contended with native

    feudalism. Liberty had internal and well as external opponents.35

    Throughout the Arab East feudalism continued to be a dominant social feature

    with political complications. The system centered on chiefs who held power by

    virtue of descent and the accumulation of extensive land properties The

    institution and functioning of a democratic form of government was not an easy

    task. The search for a new political structure has not yet ended. Politically, no less

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    than socially and economically, the entire Arab East is still in a state of

    transition.36

    On 15 December, Iraqis will go to the polls to vote for the first time under the new

    Iraqi constitution for a democratic, civilian government. They are expected to vote in

    greater numbers than ever before. Hundreds of campaigns have been waged for national,

    provincial and local positions. Some candidacies are independent, and many others have

    been supported by sophisticated networks of staff and volunteers organized and funded

    by national party organizations. Campaign advertisements were released using television

    and print; campaign Web-sites were maintained, complete with election-day countdowns

    and attention-grabbing photos of Ms. Egypt 2005; and text-messages were sent to Iraqna-

    network cellular phones until rules brought campaigning to a close two days prior to the

    election. A professor at Baghdad University is attempting the first nation-wide poll by an

    Iraqi since the U.S.-Coalition invasion in 2003. Although Iraqs election looks like

    democracy in action, it is not properly comprehended as democracy by any of the four

    models. Iraqs present occupation and constant unrest is not conducive to any rich form

    of democracy. Its troubles reach deeper, to the inclination it is given by history and

    tradition to adopt democracy only of a particular form not yet delineated.

    To borrow Benjamin Barbers metaphor, Iraq is less a linked chain of identities,

    traditions and interests, than a woven cable. Tribes and ethnic groups are multi-

    denominational; regions are multi-ethnic; ethnicities are multi-tribal; Iraqis of every

    tribal, denominational, and ethnic identity live side by side, and now espouse a wide

    array of partisan loyalties. Iraqs politics will ideally reflect this complexity by

    permitting participants in its politics to flourish both independently and together, seeking

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    some form of genuine cooperation, instead of through liberalisms formula for balance

    through regulated conflict. Liberalism asserts values that are antithetical to Iraqs Arab,

    Muslim, national, tribal and ethnic identities. The liberal materialists picture of radical,

    individualist Man competing for physical and psychic space and property is foreign to a

    tribal mindset. Islam, which is remarkable among faiths for its claim to universalism and

    its creation of a unifying identity among Muslims, conflicts with liberalisms universalist

    claims. Liberalism will serve most effectively to channel Iraqs ever-present conflict into

    a tenuous politics. However, it will fail to satisfy Iraqs real need for healing, unity, and

    accommodation of its potentially beneficial orientation toward non-Western forms of

    community and identity.

    Civic republicanism holds limited promise for Iraq that has not been explored by

    the scholarly literature and is too quickly discounted by Iraqs foreign advisors. Viewed

    as a familial image writ large, Rousseaus republic is wholly consistent with Iraqis many

    native sources of identity and repositories of power. The character of the political

    association described in the Social Contract conforms to the collective decision-making

    processes pursued by tribal and religious leaders, the group action pursued by ethnic and

    religious blocs, as well as the completeness with which most Iraqis embrace some or all

    traditional sources of identity inherited at birth. Just as political association in the

    republic of the Social Contract is nominally voluntary and permanent once chosen, so too

    are Iraqis associations with traditional groups. Whereas the Hussein regime used

    violence and coercion to manipulate and break religious, tribal and ethnic hierarchies

    including mass killings and arbitrary appointments to hereditary sheikdoms civic

    republicanism should respect and protect them as sources of legitimacy, national unity,

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    and improved government functioning. Individual sheiks, imams and other leaders have

    been consulted for support in constructing a democratic political system, but they should

    be inducted as a part of the countrys unified civic fiber.

    The ability of native cultural groupings to promote national unity is conditioned on

    Iraqs adoption of the community-building qualities found in the civic republican

    tradition. Beyond the Sunni-Shiite and Arab-Kurd divides featured on the news, Iraq is

    composed of many smaller groups that maintain distinctive traditions, often reflecting the

    countrys varied landscape. For example, the Marsh tribes near Nassiriya are well-known

    across the region for their fishing techniques and music; the Jibouri and Doulaemi tribes

    have spread across the country, but maintain ancestral homelands near Sulemaniya; Iraq

    is also home to very small cults of fire and devil worshippers the Islamic Empire never

    managed to convert. Diversity distinguishes Iraq from the countrys more homogenous

    and modernized neighbors. The shared experience by cultural groups not only of ancient

    history, but of colonialism and recent traumas, can be seen as contributors to a common

    national character. In his letter on the Government of Poland, Rousseau says, the love

    of fatherland and of freedom animated by the virtues inseparable from that love37

    is

    enough to galvanize Poland against subjugation.

    As Iraqs tribal and ethnic groups are loosely grouped in specific geographical

    locations, confederation may be a practicable means to steel group identities against the

    modernizing and homogenizing effects likely to impact the country, and to provide visual

    evidence of Iraqs cultural wealth. Rousseau writes, If Poland were what I wish it to be,

    a confederation of thirty-three small states, it would contain the force of great Monarchies

    with the freedom of small Republics.38

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    Small republics offer practical benefits for efficient, responsive government and

    maintenance of public morals. Iraqs diverse needs will not be easily satisfied by the

    centralized ministries in Baghdad, as has already been seen in nearly three years of

    reconstruction, but local governments in a confederation of small republics will easily

    assess their own needs and gauge public preferences. In nearly one hundred years, Iraq

    has had two kings, two military leaders and a dictator, each of whom has embarked on

    public projects for his own glorification. Rousseau suggests that small republics are

    potentially more responsible.

    Preserve, restore among you simple morals, wholesome tastes, a warlike spirit free

    of ambition; form courageous and disinterested souls involve your peoples in

    agriculture and the arts necessary for life, make money contemptible and, if

    possible, useless, seek, find more powerful and more reliable springs to achieve

    great things.39

    Iraqs local government has shown that it is inclined to do just this. In the spring of 2004,

    as the national-level Governing Council debated the color of handwriting on the new

    Iraqi flag, Baghdads City Council appropriated funds to clean up from a long period of

    looting.

    As Iraqs new constitution and the political world developing around it are

    considered by many to be foreign and illegitimate, candidates for office often succeed by

    associating their names with traditionally respected power-sources, such as clergy,

    influential families, and large tribes. These groups become campaign engines, reliable

    voting blocs, and legitimating constituencies identified by other partisans as desirable

    allies, much as American partisans align by ideology. Compared to the private interests

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    addressed in the Federalist Papers as dangerous factions, native power centers contribute

    the legitimacy that is perceived to be in such short supply.

    Although civic republicanism more readily allows the assertion of native values,

    the development of active citizenship, and the provision of effective governance than

    liberal democracy, it is remains uncertain that the democratic form appropriate for Iraq

    has been conceived by theory. J.J. Rousseaus caution to Polands Count Wielhorski still

    applies: A foreigner can contribute scarcely any but general views, which might

    enlighten the institutor, not guide him.40

    It remains for Iraq to decide what it most wants

    to be.

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    20

    Notes:1 Snyder, R. Claire - The Logic of Liberalism 22

    Locke, John The Second Treatise 93

    Snyder 24

    Snyder 45

    Snyder 86

    Barber Strong Democracy 57

    Nussbaum Sex and Social Justice 98

    Nussbaum 109

    The Federalist Papers 3310

    The Federalist Papers 7811

    Barber 412

    Barber 3113

    Barber 2114

    Barber 4615

    Barber 4916

    Barber 6517

    Barber 4918

    Barber 6819

    Rousseau, Jean-Jacques - The Social Contract 15120

    Rousseau xv21

    Rousseau 14822

    Rousseau xvi23

    Rousseau 19024

    Sandel, Michael Democracys Discontent 725

    Sandel 326

    Sandel 31827

    Sandel 12928

    Snyder, R. Claire Democratic Theory and the Case for Public Deliberation, 1-629

    Matthews, David Politics for People 20830

    Barber 13131

    Barber 13132

    Barber 26633

    Hitti, Philip A History of the Arabs 74934

    Huntington Clash of Civilizations 9435

    Hitti, Philip 75636

    Hitti, Philip 75637

    Rousseau, Jean-Jacques - Government of Poland 23838

    Rousseau 23139

    Rousseau 22440

    Rousseau 177