Yesterday, supporters of Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr entered Baghdad’s Green Zone and occupied parliament.
It was the second time this week that Sadr’s supporters had breached the heavily fortified area containing parliament, government buildings and foreign embassies. On Wednesday, demonstrators entered the parliamentary building before eventually withdrawing. Yesterday they returned in much larger numbers, and this time Sadr instructed them to remain until further notice.
The immediate dispute concerns who should become Iraq’s next prime minister. But the political crisis began long before protesters entered parliament.
Iraq held parliamentary elections in October 2021.
Nine months later, the country still has no new government.
That fact is worth examining because it challenges one of the easiest assumptions we make about democracy: hold an election, count the votes, determine who won and allow the winner to govern.
Iraq did the first two.
The remaining steps became much harder.
Sadr’s political movement emerged from the election as the largest parliamentary bloc, winning 73 of 329 seats. That was a substantial victory but nowhere close to a majority. Sadr therefore needed coalition partners to construct a government.
He attempted to build an alliance with Sunni and Kurdish parties that would exclude several of his Shiite political rivals, particularly groups associated with the Iran-backed Coordination Framework.
That effort failed.
The reason tells us something important about the difference between electoral democracy and coalition democracy.
Winning the largest number of seats does not necessarily mean controlling government when no party possesses a majority.
Power depends on whether a party can construct a coalition large enough to operate the institutions.
This is a mathematical problem and a political one simultaneously.
Sadr had more seats than any individual rival.
His opponents collectively possessed enough power to prevent him from implementing the government he wanted.
The political system therefore entered deadlock.
This should sound familiar after France last month, where Macron lost his parliamentary majority and suddenly needed opposition support to pass legislation.
But Iraq’s institutional fragmentation is considerably deeper because political competition is organised not only around ideology and party but also around sectarian, ethnic and patronage networks.
Since the political order created after the 2003 US invasion, Iraq’s major offices have generally been distributed according to an informal power-sharing arrangement known as muhasasa.
The presidency normally goes to a Kurd.
The prime ministership goes to a Shiite Arab.
The speaker of parliament goes to a Sunni Arab.
Other ministries and state institutions are divided among parties and political blocs.
There is an understandable historical logic behind this arrangement.
Iraq is a deeply diverse country with a traumatic history of authoritarian rule, sectarian repression, invasion, insurgency and civil conflict. After Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated dictatorship collapsed, the new political system needed mechanisms ensuring that major communities did not believe the state would simply become an instrument of another group.
Power-sharing can reduce that fear.
If every major community knows it will possess some access to government, losing an election becomes less existential.
This is the same institutional logic behind Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement.
But power-sharing creates costs.
If political offices are allocated partly according to communal identity rather than electoral competition or administrative competence, political parties acquire incentives to represent communities rather than citizens collectively.
A Shiite party competes to demonstrate that it can protect Shiite interests.
A Kurdish party protects Kurdish interests.
A Sunni party protects Sunni interests.
The institution designed to prevent sectarian exclusion can therefore reproduce sectarian political identity.
Again, institutions can preserve the categories they were created to manage.
Northern Ireland demonstrated this in May.
Iraq demonstrates a more severe version.
There is also an economic consequence.
When ministries become associated with political parties, control over government institutions can become a source of patronage.
Jobs.
Contracts.
Public spending.
Appointments.
Access to state resources.
Political competition therefore becomes partly competition over distribution of the state.
This is particularly important in Iraq because oil dominates government revenue.
The state receives enormous income from petroleum exports and then distributes much of that wealth through public employment, spending and contracts.
That creates what economists call a rentier state dynamic.
Governments financed heavily through natural-resource revenue can develop a different relationship with citizens from governments financed primarily through broad taxation.
In a tax-based state, government needs citizens’ money.
Citizens therefore have leverage to demand accountability over how that money is spent.
In a resource-based state, government can receive substantial revenue directly from exporting oil.
Political competition then focuses more heavily on who controls the institutions distributing those rents.
This does not make democracy impossible.
Norway is an obvious counterexample.
Institutions determine whether resource wealth becomes a shared national asset or a prize captured through political networks.
Iraq’s institutions have struggled with the second problem.
This helps explain why citizens can live in an oil-rich country and still experience weak electricity supply, unemployment, inadequate public services and corruption.
National wealth is not the same thing as state capacity.
Iraq can export billions of dollars of oil while struggling to provide reliable electricity.
That sounds contradictory only if we assume money automatically becomes government performance.
It doesn’t.
Resources have to move through institutions.
If those institutions are fragmented, corrupt or organised around patronage, large budgets can coexist with poor outcomes.
This is another reason GDP and government revenue are incomplete measures of political development.
The state has to convert resources into public goods.
That conversion process may be more important than the resources themselves.
Sadr has built much of his political appeal around attacking exactly this political establishment.
That makes his role paradoxical.
He is simultaneously an insider and an outsider.
His movement has participated in elections and government. Sadrist politicians have held state positions. His supporters are deeply embedded within Iraq’s political system.
Yet Sadr presents himself as a nationalist opponent of corruption, foreign interference and the established political class.
This is a familiar populist structure.
Participate in institutions while arguing that the institutions are controlled by an illegitimate elite.
The strategy can be extremely effective because it allows a politician to claim credit for representation without accepting full responsibility for the system’s failures.
When institutions work, the movement participated.
When institutions fail, the establishment is responsible.
That does not mean Sadr’s criticisms are insincere.
Iraq genuinely has serious corruption and governance problems.
It means anti-establishment politics becomes complicated when the anti-establishment movement has spent years inside the establishment.
This resembles Imran Khan’s position in Pakistan.
Outsider identity can survive surprisingly long after entering government if the politician continues identifying some deeper network of elites as the real establishment.
Sadr’s nationalism also distinguishes him from several rival Shiite factions because he has criticised both American and Iranian influence in Iraq.
That is politically important.
Iraq sits between competing regional and international powers.
The United States invaded the country in 2003 and maintains significant political influence.
Iran developed deep relationships with Iraqi political parties and armed groups, particularly after the fall of Saddam and during the war against Islamic State.
Many Iraqis resent both forms of external influence.
Sadr has attempted to occupy that nationalist space.
His opposition to Iran-aligned factions therefore cannot be reduced simply to a sectarian conflict because the major competing blocs are themselves predominantly Shiite.
That demonstrates how political cleavages evolve.
A political system created partly around Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish power-sharing can later produce major conflicts within those communities.
Identity blocs are not internally homogeneous.
Shiite politics contains different parties, clerics, militias, economic networks and attitudes towards Iran.
Kurdish politics contains competing parties.
Sunni politics contains competing leaders.
The categories useful for understanding one historical period can become too broad for another.
This is another sign that political institutions need to adapt.
Iraq’s current crisis also originates partly from a constitutional interpretation. Earlier this year, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court effectively required a two-thirds quorum in parliament for electing the president.
That gave Sadr’s opponents enough seats to block the process even though his coalition was larger.
Again, institutional rules create power.
The Coordination Framework did not need to defeat Sadr’s coalition electorally.
It needed enough MPs to prevent the quorum.
This is veto-player politics again.
Turkey demonstrated it inside NATO.
Minority parties demonstrate it in coalition parliaments.
Iraq demonstrates it inside government formation.
The same institutional mechanism can protect inclusion and create paralysis.
A supermajority requirement exists because some decisions are considered too important for a narrow majority.
That protects minorities.
But if the minority uses the rule to prevent any outcome until it receives what it wants, bargaining can become hostage-taking.
There is no clear boundary between legitimate veto and obstruction.
The institution deliberately gives actors leverage.
The political system depends on them using that leverage without making agreement impossible.
Sadr eventually responded to the deadlock in an extraordinary way.
In June, he ordered all 73 of his MPs to resign from parliament.
They did.
At first, this appeared to remove his movement from formal parliamentary politics.
Under Iraqi electoral rules, many of the vacant seats then passed to runners-up, strengthening Sadr’s rivals in the Coordination Framework.
From a conventional parliamentary perspective, the move seems almost irrational.
Sadr won the election.
Then he voluntarily surrendered the seats.
But perhaps Sadr is playing a different political game.
Parliamentary seats are one source of power.
Street mobilisation is another.
Religious authority is another.
Control over political networks is another.
Armed groups are another.
Sadr may believe his influence outside parliament exceeds what his 73 seats could accomplish inside it.
Yesterday’s mobilisation demonstrates that possibility.
This is where Iraq’s crisis becomes particularly dangerous.
Democracy depends on political actors believing institutional power is more valuable than extra-institutional power.
If a movement concludes it can achieve more by mobilising supporters to occupy parliament than by sitting inside parliament, the incentive structure has failed.
This does not necessarily mean the protesters’ grievances are illegitimate.
The issue is the mechanism through which those grievances become political authority.
An election assigns every voter formally equal political weight.
Street mobilisation assigns more influence to people capable of mobilising more effectively.
A politician with highly organised supporters therefore gains an advantage unavailable to citizens who disagree but remain at home.
This is exactly the problem Sri Lanka confronted over the last three weeks.
Protest can reveal that institutions have lost legitimacy.
It cannot permanently substitute for institutions.
The comparison between Sri Lanka and Iraq is useful because the causes differ.
Sri Lankan protesters mobilised during a catastrophic economic collapse against a president whose public legitimacy had largely disintegrated.
Iraq’s protesters are mobilising during a prolonged government-formation dispute among competing political blocs.
In both cases, people physically entered institutions that were supposed to represent them.
That symbolism should worry politicians.
When citizens occupy parliament, they are communicating that the building no longer feels like an institution through which their political preferences are being represented.
The response cannot simply be stronger walls around parliament.
It has to involve asking why the formal institution appears ineffective.
But the protesters also need to recognise something.
If every political bloc occupies parliament whenever coalition negotiations produce an unfavourable result, elections become meaningless.
Democracy requires losing institutional battles without treating every defeat as evidence that institutional politics should be abandoned.
Sadr won the largest bloc.
He did not win a majority.
His opponents therefore retain political rights too.
This is where majoritarian populism can become dangerous.
Winning more votes than any single opponent is not the same thing as representing the entire people.
Pluralist democracy exists precisely because several groups possess legitimate claims simultaneously.
Sadr’s supporters may believe the rival Coordination Framework is corrupt or excessively aligned with Iran.
They may be right about particular actors.
That does not erase the votes represented by rival MPs.
The political system has to aggregate competing legitimacy rather than declare one bloc authentic and everyone else illegitimate.
There is another problem: Iraq’s caretaker government has remained in place throughout the deadlock.
Caretaker governments are useful because the state cannot simply stop operating while politicians negotiate.
But prolonged caretaker government creates democratic ambiguity.
A government designed to be temporary begins making decisions for months.
Its authority persists because no replacement can be agreed.
Again, temporary institutions become problematic when their endpoint disappears.
Belgium famously survived extremely long government-formation periods because its administrative institutions remained capable of functioning.
Iraq possesses much weaker state capacity and much greater security risks.
Deadlock therefore carries higher costs.
This demonstrates why identical institutional arrangements can produce different outcomes in different states.
Coalition bargaining works more safely when bureaucracies function independently, security is stable and citizens trust institutions.
Where state capacity is weaker, political paralysis can create larger governance gaps.
Institutions operate inside institutional ecosystems.
You cannot simply copy one constitutional rule from another country and expect identical results.
This is one of the limitations of constitution-building after conflict.
International advisers can design electoral systems, federal structures and power-sharing arrangements.
The rules then interact with local political organisations, informal networks and economic incentives in ways no constitutional document fully controls.
Iraq’s post-2003 order demonstrates both the achievement and limitation of institutional design.
The achievement is significant.
Iraq has held repeated competitive elections.
Governments have changed.
Different political blocs participate.
The country has not returned to Saddam Hussein’s personal dictatorship.
Those are real accomplishments.
But elections alone have not produced sufficiently effective government.
Corruption remains severe.
Public services remain inadequate.
Political parties maintain relationships with armed groups.
Government formation can take months.
Citizens repeatedly protest against the system.
This is why democratic consolidation should not be measured only by whether elections occur.
Elections are necessary.
They are one stage in a much longer chain.
Votes have to become seats.
Seats have to become coalitions.
Coalitions have to become governments.
Governments have to become policy.
Policy has to become public services.
Public services contribute to legitimacy.
If the chain repeatedly breaks after the first stage, citizens eventually begin questioning the value of the first stage too.
That may be Iraq’s central danger.
People can lose faith in democracy not because they suddenly prefer dictatorship but because democratic institutions appear incapable of producing outcomes.
This is the performance problem I wrote about after Biden’s Summit for Democracy last December.
Democratic legitimacy has procedural and substantive components.
Citizens value the right to choose leaders.
They also expect electricity.
The two should not be treated as alternatives.
A government that provides services without accountability can become authoritarian.
A democracy that repeatedly fails to provide basic services can lose public trust.
Durable political systems need both responsiveness and capacity.
Iraq possesses enormous resources with which to build that capacity.
High global oil prices are currently generating substantial revenue.
That should be an opportunity.
But resource wealth can postpone institutional reform because governments can distribute additional money without fixing the mechanisms through which money is spent.
A higher oil price creates fiscal space.
It does not automatically create better governance.
In fact, abundant revenue can reduce pressure for difficult reforms.
This is the resource curse in political rather than purely economic terms.
When government revenue increases independently of institutional quality, politicians can maintain patronage systems longer.
Again, natural resources are not destiny.
Institutions determine how rents are managed.
The question is whether Iraq can move from distributing oil rents through political networks towards providing public goods through impersonal institutions.
That transformation is much harder than holding another election.
It requires civil-service reform, stronger accountability, reliable courts, financial transparency and political parties willing to surrender control over parts of the state they currently use to reward supporters.
Those reforms create concentrated losers.
The people benefiting from weak institutions are often the people with enough political power to block reform.
This is why institutional change becomes difficult even when almost everyone agrees corruption is bad.
The benefits of reform are dispersed across millions of citizens.
The losses are concentrated among organised political networks.
Concentrated interests usually mobilise more effectively.
That is political economy.
Yesterday’s occupation of parliament is therefore both a symptom and a warning.
It is a symptom of a political system that has failed for nine months to convert an election into a government.
It is a warning that one of Iraq’s most powerful political movements increasingly believes extra-parliamentary mobilisation may produce more leverage than parliamentary representation.
Neither side should be comfortable with that.
Sadr’s opponents need to recognise that procedural vetoes cannot become permanent substitutes for political compromise.
Sadr needs to recognise that electoral victory does not entitle his movement to bypass institutions when coalition arithmetic becomes inconvenient.
Both sides can be institutionally irresponsible simultaneously.
The solution is not determining which faction possesses perfect legitimacy.
None does.
The solution is creating enough mutual constraint that every faction concludes bargaining is cheaper than escalation.
That is what political institutions are supposed to accomplish.
Iraq has spent almost twenty years building electoral democracy after dictatorship.
Its current problem is not that citizens cannot vote.
It is that voting has not become sufficiently connected to governing.
An election occurred nine months ago.
The ballots were counted.
Politicians know how many seats they possess.
Yet parliament is occupied and the country still lacks a new government.
Democracy cannot stop at representation.
Eventually representation has to produce decisions.
Otherwise citizens begin searching for other ways to make themselves heard.
Yesterday, they climbed over the walls.
