USIP: Constitutional Reform in Iraq: Improving Prospects, Political Decisions Needed

[Rex Brynen]

Still and all, Hamas was democratically elected, the current Iranian government was democratically elected as were Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin and Pol Pot.

Well no, they weren't (with the exception of Hamas, and the only partial exception of Iran). It is true that they all tried to claim democratic legitimacy (which is I think your point), but I think that only highlights the (potential) power of expressed popular consent.

The Western forms of democracy all have some connection between the form and the exercise of power. This is, in part, a result of certain cultural assumptions that exist in our background.

The question of democracy and underlying political culture is a hotly debated (perhaps THE most hotly debated) issue in the democratization literature. Certainly it helps a great deal if underlying cultural values support democracy—but the "third wave" of democratization suggested that it could also take root in societies with no prior history of democratic politics.

The naivety that I was talking about was the blythe assumption that such a series of assumptions either existed or where strong enough within Iraq and Afghanistan to allow for a republican form of government that would work in the ways they do in the west.

Yes, absolutely.

"Validity" is, to my mind, a social construct in politics. I believe that it is quite rare, possibly limited to the Anglo complex and, I think, Salic law, that a "law" that is invalid should be overthrown. I'm thinking about Magna Carta style right of revolt, and yet your first question seems to be predicated on the assumption that something like that exists. I think that most societies have a very different, starker, view of governments and laws.

I think the prevailing social practice in much of the world is not so much overturning laws, or the governments that made them, but rather simply ignoring them (or a passive-aggressive non-cooperation with government, in what James Scott called "everyday forms of resistance")--especially where the central government lacks the ability to enforce its legal writ.

I tend to think that democratic politics has a lot to do with boundaries of the acceptable and unacceptable, in which public attitudes, capabilities, perceived intentions, and the local balance of forces play a key role. Democracies tend to work when political entrpreneurs are unwilling or unable to contemplate using nondemocratic methods to achieve policy ends. Its kind of like successful nuclear deterrence