Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Welcome to the Neno's Place!

Neno's Place Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality


Neno

I can be reached by phone or text 8am-7pm cst 972-768-9772 or, once joining the board I can be reached by a (PM) Private Message.

Join the forum, it's quick and easy

Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Welcome to the Neno's Place!

Neno's Place Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality


Neno

I can be reached by phone or text 8am-7pm cst 972-768-9772 or, once joining the board I can be reached by a (PM) Private Message.

Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.
Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Many Topics Including The Oldest Dinar Community. Copyright © 2006-2020


    An international researcher analyzes the reasons for Iraq's transformation into a 'hybrid state'

    Rocky
    Rocky
    Rocky
    Admin Assist
    Admin Assist


    Posts : 272698
    Join date : 2012-12-21
    • Post n°1

    An international researcher analyzes the reasons for Iraq's transformation into a 'hybrid state' Empty An international researcher analyzes the reasons for Iraq's transformation into a 'hybrid state'

    Post by Rocky Tue 28 Feb 2023, 6:05 am

    [size=30]An international researcher analyzes the reasons for Iraq's transformation into a 'hybrid state'
    [ltr]2023.02.28 - 11:49[/ltr]
    [/size]
    [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
      
    Baghdad - people  
    The Iraqi researcher at the American Carnegie Institution, Haris Hassan, published an analytical article on the reasons that prompted a number of researchers to launch the term "hybrid state" between armed institutions and factions on Iraq.  
      
    [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  
      
      
    Hassan mentioned in the article published by "An-Nahar" and followed by "Nass" (February 28, 2023) that the "Shiite" armed factions have evolved into what political scientists today call "hybrid actors", and they are the actors who cannot be classified within the usual binary as official or non-formal actors. official.  
      
    Analysis text:  
      
    While Iraqi Prime Minister Muhammad Shia al-Sudani was attending the Munich conference, holding meetings with Western officials about opportunities for cooperation and investment in Iraq, and talking to the press about his government's priorities, including confronting "climate change" and burning associated gas, a statement was issued by a leader in the "Hezbollah Brigades" And the "Popular Mobilization Forces", attacking the United States and Saudi Arabia forcefully, and stressing the need to "take the battle to their own home." According to some observers, Ghadaba is the leader of the Brigades (an organization that plays a double role, on the one hand it is a "resistance faction" independent of the government, and on the other hand it controls leadership positions in the "Popular Mobilization"  
      
    However, far from the direct interpretation of the background to this statement and the circumstances of its issuance, it is necessary to look at the bigger picture. This statement is nothing more than a new episode in a long series of positions that showed a divergence between the official Iraqi government position, its priorities and the nature of its foreign discourse, and the position of the armed Shiite factions backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. While the official discourse is usually characterized by diplomacy, a desire for openness, communication, and an emphasis on balance in foreign relations, the discourse of the factions is characterized by sharpness, the logic of “enemies and friends,” an emphasis on the ideological “constants” of Shiite political Islam, and a state of readiness for permanent war against America, its allies, and regional and ideological opponents. What deepens the bewilderment of some is that the factions do not act here as political organizations expressing opinions that are not consistent with the government line, but rather they possess military power on the ground and are active within a supposedly governmental institution (the “Popular Mobilization Forces”).  
      
    The factions have evolved into what political scientists today call hybrid actors, actors who cannot be classified within the usual dichotomy as formal or informal actors. Recent years have witnessed an increase in the number of academic and research literature and writings that used the concept of "combination" in approaching the state of the factions, and researchers such as Renad Mansour and others emphasized that Iraq has become a model in the inability of the Weberian approach (relative to the German sociologist Max Weber) to the state, as An independent bureaucratic entity that monopolizes the power of legal coercion in its geographical territory. This type of perception tends to deal with the hybrid nature of the state and some of its actors as a fait accompli, rather than trying to project an ideal model on reality and then wondering why reality does not match this model.  
      
    However, it is important to raise fundamental questions about what the existence of hybrid actors means in relation to the nature of the state's relationship with its society and its surroundings, specifically with regard to the issue of legitimacy. The gap between al-Sudani's speech and behavior (and former Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi before him) and what the factions and their spokes say reflect two different understandings of the state, its role, and its relationship with society, and Iraq is not the only case in history that witnessed tension between the two understandings. This disagreement can be viewed from the point of view of the controversy between the German thinker Karl Schmidt and his liberal and rational opponents such as Hannah Arendt, Jurgen Habermas, and John Rolls. Schmitt came up with two basic ideas that represented a departure from the optimistic liberal-democratic perspective that has dominated Western political thought at least since the nineteenth century. The first is that politics revolves mainly around the distinction between enemy and friend, and this distinction relates to human nature itself and the different identities, lifestyles and concepts. basic around.  
      
    Schmidt's critics considered him a theorist of authoritarianism, and even of fascism, through his legitimization of nationalism and his subordination of law to the will and ideology of the state and the "master" power that dominates it. Hannah Arendt considered that Schmidt's doctrine establishes totalitarianism and an authoritarian, mono-identity state that crushes individuals and undermines their freedoms by choice. The problem is that whenever the optimistic perception prevails about the superiority of the rational-liberal model and the burial of Schmitt's propositions that belong to a world dominated by contradictions, conflicts and permanent wars, reality returns to remind us of the usefulness of these propositions and the "naivety" of the liberal view. It is enough here to think of the setbacks of the Arab Spring, Putin and his war in Ukraine, the rise of China, and the steadfastness of the regimes of Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela, to return to the fundamental questions about the state, the political system, sovereignty and the rule of law.  
      
    In Iraq, it can be said that there is a constant tension between two understandings of the state, one tends to consider it an institutional entity that represents the interests and needs of its citizens and the ethnic, religious and sectarian groups that make up its population, where Iraqi democracy is mixed with the componentistic philosophy that became the ruling ideology of the political system after 2003, and the majority-sovereign understanding. For the dominant "sectarian" group, and let's say the victor, who wants to imprint the state with its character and follow it to its ideological perspective and classification of enemies and friends.  
      
    This tension between the two understandings reflects an ambiguity about the nature of the Iraqi state and the circumstantial settlements that govern it. On the one hand, democracy-componentialism re-imposes its conditions in every electoral season due to the need to collect votes to form a government that derives its legitimacy from the electoral process, which requires deals and settlements between the "components" in the language of the political system. On the other hand, the factions and other religious and social actors impose their existence as actors above the law, deriving their legitimacy from their power on the ground and from the ideology that justifies them giving priority to religious-sectarian loyalty that transcends borders over the interests of the state-national. In Iraqi Kurdistan - where there is a state-like entity that basically lacks external recognition - we witness a similar model in terms of the existence of a dual system in which parliamentary and constitutional institutions coexist with the de facto authority formed by the dominant families and their affiliated armed factions that also operate as hybrid actors.  
      
    In this sense, the existence of the hybrid state is a result of the absence of a decisive criterion for legitimacy. Is it the legitimacy produced by the ballot box or imposed by arms? Is it the legitimacy determined by the provisions of the constitution or the ideology of the stronger party? This mixing of the two legalities produces an inconsistent mixture of Schmidt and Arendt, from a justification for the supremacy of sovereign power over the law and at the same time an acknowledgment of the supremacy of the law over all. Hybrid here is an expression of a situation in which the conflict is not resolved in the interest of one of the two legitimacy, and in which politics takes place through circumstantial settlements between the conditions of the two legitimacy and the forces that carry and represent them. This also helps us understand how former Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi linked his resignation in 2019 to his obedience to the directions of the religious authority, and not because he felt that his democratic mandate had ended because of the protests! Or how Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers to occupy government buildings without bearing any responsibility for the results of that!  
      
    While Iraqi politicians assert that Iraq is a "democratic" state, what is certain is that the current reality in Iraq has moved so far from the normative paradigm of liberal democracy, that there is no significant connection between the two. It is enough that the conflict in its current form takes place between a constituent understanding of democracy, which considers that legitimate political representation is for the identities of groups and not for citizens, and a majority understanding based on the dominance of the larger group and its perceptions and the ideology of the political and armed forces that dominate it.  
      
    Faced with this reality, Schmidt's recall seems useful for understanding Iraq and understanding why it has turned into a "hybrid country."  
    [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
    • Back to top
      Current date/time is Fri 28 Jun 2024, 11:11 pm