Arato Constitution Making Under Occupation

The Politics of Imposed Revolution in Iraq
1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-51243-5
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 376 Seiten, EPUB, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History

The attempt in 2004 to draft an interim constitution in Iraq and the effort to enact a permanent one in 2005 were unintended outcomes of the American occupation, which first sought to impose a constitution by its agents. This two-stage constitution-making paradigm, implemented in a wholly unplanned move by the Iraqis and their American sponsors, formed a kind of compromise between the populist-democratic project of Shi'ite clerics and America's external interference.

As long as it was used in a coherent and legitimate way, the method held promise. Unfortunately, the logic of external imposition and political exclusion compromised the negotiations. Andrew Arato is the first person to record this historic process and analyze its special problems. He compares the drafting of the Iraqi constitution to similar, externally imposed constitutional revolutions by the United States, especially in Japan and Germany, and identifies the political missteps that contributed to problems of learning and legitimacy.

Instead of claiming that the right model of constitution making would have maintained stability in Iraq, Arato focuses on the fragile opportunity for democratization that was strengthened only slightly by the methods used to draft a constitution. Arato contends that this event would have benefited greatly from an overall framework of internationalization, and he argues that a better set of guidelines (rather than the obsolete Hague and Geneva regulations) should be followed in the future. With access to an extensive body of literature, Arato highlights the difficulty of exporting democracy to a country that opposes all such foreign designs and fundamentally disagrees on matters of political identity.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Arato, Andrew

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten
• Rechtswissenschaften Öffentliches Recht Staats- und Verfassungsrecht
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
1. The Externally Imposed Revolution and Its Destruction of the Iraqi State
2. Postsovereign Constitution Making: The New Paradigm (and Iraq)
3. Sistani Versus Bremer: The Emergence of the Two-Stage Model in Iraq
4. Imposition and Bargaining in the Making of the Interim Constitution
5. The Making of the "Permanent" Constitution
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Leseproben

Read the >conclusion from Constitution Making Under Occupation. (pdf)

Über Autor(innen)

Arato Andrew :
Andrew Arato (PhD, Political Science, Chicago) is the Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor in Political and Social Theory at the New School. He is the author of a number of books, including Post Sovereign Constitution Making: Learning and Legitimacy (Oxford, 2016), Adventures of the Constituent Power (Cambridge, 2016), and Civil Society, Constitution, and Legitimacy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).Andrew Arato is Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor of Political and Social Theory at the New School for Social Research and founding editor of the journal Constellations. He has advised constitution makers in Nepal and the Hungarian parliament, and his books include Civil Society and Political Theory; Civil Society, Constitution, and Legitimacy; From Neo-Marxism to Democratic Theory; The Young Lukács and the Origins of Western Marxism; and Habermas on Law, Democracy, and Legitimacy.