Abstract
Federalism has not been able to stabilize Iraq or bring peace to the country. Instead, a flawed federal system has further increased ethnic and religious divisions and weakened the Iraqi state. It has also set an example for other Middle Eastern states, most notably Syria, where federalism is discussed as a potential solution to the ongoing civil war. While the Kurdish Question unites both countries, attitudes toward federalism are mainly hostile among the Arab majority populations. Instead, demands for centralization and colonial legacies of the need for strong nation-states have had devastating consequences for both countries—and have fundamentally affected inter-ethnic relations. But what can Syria learn from Iraq if anything? And why was Iraq’s federal system so flawed? This chapter looks at the role of constitutional engineering, the positions of external actors and the need to find inter-ethnic compromise and consensus on the future design of the state as key issues in both countries.
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Notes
- 1.
We follow the use of a federal political system as suggested by the editors in the Introduction, which may refer to a fully functional federation or to any other decentralised system, with several key federal elements as highlighted by Ronald Watts (2008).
- 2.
See also Soeren Keil’s contribution on the Balkans in this volume.
- 3.
Both authors have worked as advisors to the Syrian opposition and contributed to and commented on the Draft Constitution discussed here.
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Belser, E.M., Keil, S. (2022). Learning from Iraq? Debates on Federalism and Decentralization for Post-War Syria. In: Keil, S., Kropp, S. (eds) Emerging Federal Structures in the Post-Cold War Era. Federalism and Internal Conflicts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93669-3_9
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