This paper explains how subnational governance works in Iraq, and highlights the issues and options facing Iraqi decisionmakers on the issue of decentralization. This report is being released during a period of intense frustration among Iraqi citizens over the lack of local participation in governance. Overcentralization was the defining characteristic of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; its counterpart—decentralization—has been a central theme throughout the reconstruction of the country. Yet the promise of formal decentralization never fully matured between 2003 and 2008, and the frustration caused by this unfulfilled promise now threatens to severely strain the cohesion of the fledgling Iraqi democracy.
Provincial powers legislation was approved by Iraq’s national assembly on February 13, 2008, and, after some debate, by the Presidency Council as well. Yet, the issue of decentralization is unlikely to be resolved by one piece of legislation. The Iraqi state is still in need of a formula that can give its diverse provinces and regions sufficient freedom to prosper within the new Iraq. Failure to achieve this could result in the country’s partition into devolved states, the partial or full collapse of centralized governance, or the overcentralization of the Iraqi state under new forms of autocracy.
It should be noted that this paper does not directly deal with the three provinces controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Instead, the paper focuses on the fifteen other Iraqi provinces—the so-called “governorates that are not incorporated into a region”—that were given scanty treatment in the 2005 Iraqi constitution, and have suffered from a dearth of supporting legislation and examination by the policy community.
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