Stubborn Authoritarianism through the Parliamentary System : The Case of Iraq under the Ba'thi Regime(<Special Issue I>Role of Electoral System in Non-Democratic Regimes)

概要

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Purpose of this paper is to see how incumbent regimes attempt to utilise the introduction of an electoral system to curb challengers' will to oppose the regime and to incorporate some of them into the existing elite circles. The process of elections as well as the nomination of the ministers in Iraq under Saddam Husayn shows the pattern how the incumbent regimes embrace social forces into the current political system. A mechanism for the cooptation of potential political elites was established under Saddam's regime, reflecting his policy to rely on a coalition-like ruling system among the local groups from Upper Tigris, Middle Tigris, and Upper Euphrates. The political aspirations of these local groups in the northwestern areas were first stimulated by military involvement in politics beginning in the 1940s, and subsequently revived when Iraq was forced to expand its army to fight the war against Iran. Saddam used this cooptation network as a substitute for the party hierarchy, but it was only applied in the northwerstern area, not in the southern part of Iraq. This geographic coincidence between the range of alliance of political elites under Saddam's regime and the so-called "Sunni Triangle" led to a reduction of the nature of the regime to the sectarian factor of "sunni-ness."
日本中東学会の論文
2008-09-25