One of the interesting things about the way the Iraqi "project" has developed is that the United States has not tried to turn Iraq into a mini United States. In the case of the electoral system, they're turning Iraq into Israel.
For sure, there was that unfortunate attempt early on to privatize everything in sight, but the most important institutional design that's been made is the putative Iraqi electoral system. And that, folks, looks nothing like the one we have here. It's flaws are its own.
First of all, the Iraqi system is unitary and not federal. Not only that, there are no geographic districts at all. Second, the Iraqi system is not open, but closed. The candidate lists are not open to modification by the voters through primaries or write-ins. Third, it's proportional rather than plurality based. Only the last thing has much to recommend it.
Indeed, the proposed Iraqi system looks something a little like what Israel used to have, a pure proportional system with no geographic districts. This is a bit of an irony -- and not much of a recommendation. Any democracy in Israel's situation -- under great external pressure, with religion bound up in politics to boot -- is bound to have some crazy political swings. A pure proportional system is going to exacerbate, not reduce the problems of a tense, fractured society.
You can well understand why a federal system is not being imposed on Iraq, drawing the lines of new states/provinces would be an extra complication. But no geographic districts? The Westminster (=British) system of parliamentary government elected from geographic districts has its flaws, but would be preferable to what's proposed for Iraq.
I have to say that I have some sympathy for the idea that intervention in the Middle East to bring about democratic reform is a necessary thing. But democratic reform is not an impulse or experience whose sole home is in the United States.
This is not going to get me elected to any political office here, but other nations have long democratic traditions too. You might argue that given the sordid history of black disenfranchisement in the South that democracy in the United States is a comparatively recent phenomenon. All this prattling about being the "world's oldest democracy" ignores the experience that other countries have with democracy.
Some of that may come in useful in Iraq and in other parts of the Middle East. The political system that will work for a continental nation of 280 million is not necessarily going to function in a nation of 28 million. But it may have something to add. A little modesty about America's own democratic virtues might actually help with spreading those values and virtues.
Posted by robe0419 at October 23, 2004 5:32 PM