Zaid Al-Ali

After the 2011 uprisings started in Tunisia and swept across the Arab region, more than a dozen countries amended their constitutions, the greatest concentration of constitutional reform efforts since the end of the Cold War. This book provides a detailed account and analysis of all of these developments. Individual accounts are provided of eight different reform efforts (including Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Sudan), with particular focus on the historical context, the political dynamics, the particular process that each country followed and the substantive outcome. In its second part, the book explains that the changes that were adopted were far from revolutionary, and did not come close to matching the demands of millions of protesters. The author explains what a revolution would have looked like in the context by deconstructing the popular demands that were made in 2011 and translates them into a series of specific actions that would have led to freer societies and a better functioning state. A revolution did not take place in 2011, but it is inevitably part of the revolution’s future. This book explores what that revolution could look like.

Since the withdrawal of US occupying forces, international attention has shifted away from Iraq – but life for Iraqis has become no easier. Deadly bombings are still all too common, sectarian violence has soared and all-pervading corruption means that massive inflows of aid and oil income have made very little difference to crucial issues like security, healthcare and power availability. Now, Iraqi lawyer Zaid Al-Ali sets out why and how the post-occupation Iraqi government has failed to achieve legitimacy or improve its citizens’ lives. He argues that the ill-planned US intervention destroyed the Iraqi state, creating a black hole which corrupt and incompetent members of the elite have now made their own.

In particular, Al-Ali argues that the manner in which the constitution was drafted deliberately created a cleavage between large segments of the population, rather than bring people together. He also demonstrates that the system of government that the constitution establishes is so dysfunctional that the political class has refused to apply it. All constitutional frameworks depend on the capacity, professionalism and good faith of political elites to be successfully implemented, but in Iraq’s case, given that the politicians refused to apply the rules that were provided for in the constitution, state and society were left completely at their mercy. From 2006 onwards, the prime minister, the government and the parliament improvised the rules as they went along, deliberately and explicitly violating the constitution. In that context, Al-Ali argues that Iraq’s most senior politicians (most of whom spent decades in an unproductive exile) have no professional skills that are of any use to the state, are lazy, corrupt, very willing to engage in moral compromise, and conspiratorial in their thinking. Finally, rather than engage with the public and try to address its failures, the government has instead resorted to sectarianism to defend itself and stave off any criticism. The result is that Sunni/Shia/Kurd divisions have worsened since 2003.

Al-Ali describes in detail how the absence of any constitutional rules to govern the state’s behavior, and the politicians’ incompetence and lack of compassion have degraded the state from within. The legal system is in crisis, human-rights abuses are commonplace and the natural environment, already degraded by Saddam Hussein’s destructive projects, is worsening every day. The book nevertheless ends on an optimistic note, arguing that the basis for a democratic culture already exists within Iraq. Al-Ali states sets out the fundamental components of any comprehensive programme for Iraq, and also sets out the beginnings of a strategy for how such a programme could be implemented in the country, despite the political class’ failings. Such an effort would take years to get off even partially off the ground, but efforts are already underway.