Iraq’s Year of Rage

Issue Date October 2016
Volume 27
Issue 4
Page Numbers 110-24
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Iraqis of all ethnic and sectarian groups are fed up with the ineptitude and corruption of their political leaders and the institutions they control. Since 2015, they have turned out in record numbers to protest against their political elite. The protests that unfolded in 2015 and 2016 have highlighted two failings of Iraq’s post-2003 “democratic” order: 1) the entrenchment of a corrupt “partyocracy” that has captured the state and deepened sectarian divisions, and 2) the weakness of state institutions and the absence of the rule of law that have encouraged widespread corruption and fostered broad popular distrust of the post-Saddam Iraqi state.

About the Author

Mieczysław P. Boduszyński, assistant professor of politics at Pomona College, has also served as a diplomat for the U.S. Department of State in Albania, Kosovo, Japan, Egypt, and Libya. He is currently writing a book about U.S. and EU responses to the “Arab Spring.” From 2015 to 2016, he returned to the State Department and served as political counselor at the U.S. Consulate General in Basrah, Iraq. All views expressed here are his own and not those of the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. government.

View all work by Mieczysław P. Boduszyński