Federalism, Iraq, Spain, South Africa

Our esteemed colleague Reidar Visser has two good new entries on his website: this on the federalism issue in Iraq, and this on the latest cabinet appointments there.
I don’t, alas, have time for any prolonged comment on these really interesting essays here, and I note that both of them contain a wealth of well-organized information and analysis that’s just about impossible to come by anywhere else (or at least, anywhere else in the English-speaking world.)
I hate to make a critical point. But I note that in the “federalism” piiece he writes:

    A second group of federations are those that have been deliberately “designed”, often after a period of political upheaval and regime breakdown. Examples of this include post-war Germany, South Africa after apartheid and Ethiopia in the democratic era…

But today’s South Africa is really not a federal state in any sense in which I understand the term. It is a determinedly unitary state. The nine provinces in South Africa were deliberately– and as the result of a lengthy political process– deisgned to be purely administrative units, and not units that in any way embodied any ethnic or cultural particularity… And similarly, the ethnic and linguistic particularities in the state have no defined geographic basis (such as they have in, for example, Belgium.) That, though many Afrikaners and some, though by no means all, of the people who had previously been “citizens” of the Bantustans might at some point have been open to the idea of having ethnically based subunits within a broader South African federation.
For me, South Africa is a fascinating example of a state that, though unitary, is still intentionally dedicated to the goals of multi-culturalism and mutli-lingualism. It could therefore stand as a great example to either an Israeli-Palestinian unitary state in the future, or more immediately to the Iraqi state today. (Or indeed, to the US… )
Well, that’s just a small criticism. Clearly, I need to go and read both of Visser’s essays much more closely when I have the time.
I also note, regarding the relevance of the “Spanish example” that he cites for a possibly multilingual state, that that did not become possible for Spain until the internal linguistic-cultural issues had a chance of becoming “diluted” within the broader impulse of Spain’s assimilation within the broad, peaceable, democratic polity of the EU. But this is far from being the case in Iraq regarding, for example, the Kurdish question…
Lots of food for thought, though.

8 thoughts on “Federalism, Iraq, Spain, South Africa”

  1. Helena,
    I certainly defer to your expertise on South Africa. My reason for referring to the country was that it is often included in comparative discussions of federalism, as a state with certain federal aspects (often highlighted are the options for provincial constitutions, the province-based second chamber of parliament, and the list of exclusive powers for the provinces – albeit this one is short and admittedly rather paltry). South Africa is often considered a parallel to Germany’s model of “administrative” federalism; I have also seen the characterisation “a unitary state with federal characteristics”. The country is in fact listed as a “federation” by such organisations as the Forum of Federations. But I understand your objections very well, given the rather insignificant powers allotted to the South African provinces. This certainly is something of a contrast to the wildly confederal arrangements currently being contemplated for Iraq!
    My main reason for including South Africa was something that we seem to agree on: the demarcation of its provinces was done on a non-ethnic, even on an anti-ethnic basis. But as far as I understand, this emerged after elite negotiations, rather than as the result of grass-roots initiatives of the kind the Iraqi constitution foresees. I consider anti-sectarianism a very valuable and often underestimated aspect of Iraqi identity historically; whether it can survive the new constitution’s ambitious schedule for creating federal entities from below remains to be seen.

  2. Reidar, thanks for this additional explanation (and indeed for the wealth of information you provided in that federalism piece.)
    In South Afria, ethnic subunits were a major topic (and for a long time a stumbling block) in the negotiations that resulted in the 1994 election. True, those negotiations were in the end conducted between the leaderships of the ANC and the NP. But discussion of the topic and the expression of sometimes violent disagreement over it were extremely widespread, not only in the 1990-94 period but also, before that, within the Black communities especially. (I.e. the discussion over the “cultural preservation” aspects of the Bantustans.) Support for a strong ethnic subunit was particularloy strong among two groups: some Zulus and some Afrikaners. The conflict over this issue among Zulus was often extremely bloody (and was stoked for years by the apartheid regime.) The conflict over it among the Afrikaners was really interesting, too. One party held out for the establishment of an Afrikaner “homeland” within the new SA, but didn’t receive much significant suppport at all in the ’94 polls. In the end, according to my Afrikaner friends, most Afrikaners judged that if they held out for such a homeland it would either be very poor or entangled in continued conflict. So it looked better, as one of them said to me, “to keep the broad South African pie intact and hopefully prosperous while diminishing the Afrikaner portion of it to some degree.”
    So though the decision on being (essentially) a unitary state was one made between elites, the preceding debate over it had been very widespread…
    I think (and have written in Hayat about this) that many aspects of the transofrmation of SA are of potential value to Iraqis or others as they seek to move from a minority-dominated regime to one of full political equality. The example set by the Afrikaner community, in particular, is worth noting…
    (Btw, I’m sorry my main post here seemed so negative. I was really tired last night… )

  3. [The appointment of Shirwan al-Waili of Nasiriyya as national security adviser is also interesting. He belongs to the Tanzim al-Iraq branch of the Daawa Party and was in 2005 at one point openly associated with the “southern” discontents within the United Iraqi Alliance. At the same time, he has been a very active and vocal member of parliament, and he has clearly been interested in working within the government. His cooptation into the government means that Maliki now has at his disposal several ministers whom he can send to Basra and the south without fearing accusations of “northern” discrimination.]
    Yes, this info is invaluable. However, with all dure respect, I need to make one sad point. From this text, uninformed reader who does not track ME systematically, can make a conclusion that almost everything is rigtht about Irai political system, it works almost the same way as in the West! Iraqis have elected politicians who represent different social groups, etc, etc.
    Yes, we know that all this is absolutely not the case, Maliki simply does not have much control over anything. However, looking at current EU/NATO politics in the ME, one can conclude that this is exactly the way European politicians think: yes, Iraq is not exactly democratic in the Western sense, but give them time, money and protection against “terrorists” – and everything will be just fine.
    IMHO, this language makes certain problems 🙂

  4. On the Federalism article, and for Reidar (as comments are not allowed on his site):
    I dislike being pedantic, but the latin plural of tempus is tempora, not tempi, as in ‘O tempora, O mores’. Though I suppose this might be a deliberately false latin practice of political scientists, which the rest of us don’t understand.
    Apart from that, I thought the analysis was very good. I haven’t had a chance to read the Basra book, though the general lines that I have understood, I highly approve of. The only point that I would add, as a medievalist, is that it is really important to go further back than the Ottoman period, which modern historians never do. The Ottomans broke up the former Iraq into the vilayets of Baghdad and Basra, in their own political interests, though it was also affected by the collapse of Iraqi agriculture after the Mongol invasions. I can show you a map of Iraq in the 10th century, where Iraq is marked as stretching from Basra to Samarra (in the geographical work of Ibn Hawqal, Surat al-Ard, c.978). Indeed I would have posted it if one were allowed graphics in these comments.
    Of course, the north was part of the province of al-Jazira, which stretched from Mosul to Aleppo. I can show you that map too. I don’t think I have seen too many arguments in the blogs that Raqqa in Syria is not part of that country.
    The point is that the arguments we see from Iraqis in these comments about the unity of their country are based on these older notions, which go back to the beginning of Islam, and even further to ancient Mesopotamia, rather than the artificial creations of the Ottomans.
    It needs to be said. The Ottomans treated Iraq very badly, and their practices should in no way be taken as a base point from which the present situation should be judged.

  6. I can confirm the conclusions here on S Africa. Two years ago a student of mine from Zimbabwe won a grant to study the issue of federalism in S Africa. She wrote a brilliant paper comparing federal power sharing in Nigeria and South Africa.
    Nigeria is of course one of the countries frequently cited as a “success” case for managing subnational divisions via federal means. This despite the fact that Nigeria remains troubled with frequent Muslim-Christian clashes, and long running rebellion in southern delta regions where the country’s oil resources are found.
    Donald Horowitz at Duke University is the US academic who has long written on Nigeria’s “success” with federalism. Years ago Horowitz recommended dividing Nigeria into an increasing number of administrative/provincial subdivisions (“the more the better” he said) in order to break up ethnic group identities thus encouraging the formation of cross-ethnic/regional political alliances. This strategy was further assisted by various electoral devices, such as requiring political parties to win a minimum percentage of votes in two-thirds of all provinces and thus choose to run mixed ethnic candidate lists.
    A Nigerian political scientist named Suberu, I think?, reported how Nigeria’s federal strategy had the effect of weakening regional groups while strengthening the hand of an increasingly corrupt central government. Thus Suberu suggested there may be a point in decentralization schemes where “more federalism” (in the sense of creating more federal units) shows fewer benefits. In other words it is necessary to leave some regional power with peripheral ethnic groups, in order to check the power of one or more dominant group that controls the central government.
    My student set off to S. Africa with these ideas in mind, and she found from discussions with university professors and ANC officials that they rejected Horowitz’s theories. Early in SAfrica’s transition Horowitz was apparently brought in as a consultant, and he recommended that SAfricans adopt much of the Nigerian model. Apparently he did not get a good reception. Even though S Africa adopted the name and principle of federalism, the key actors did not want to empower politics at the local level. Nor did they want to play up the existence of subnational ethnic identities. In fact the ANC leadership realized early on that the political rhetoric of federalism and ethnic diversity did not work to their advantage. Their strategy was to emphasize the unity of all South Africans, playing up common national themes. And of course the ANC was able to win large majorities at the polls on this basis.
    Reidar’s research on Iraq is very important in this light. It is significant that until now it is the Kurds who seek regional autonomy through Iraq’s new federal structures, while the Arabs (mainly Sunni, but also Shia) reject federalism. The dynamics inside the larger Shia bloc are especially interesting, with leaderships in Baghdad and Najaf emphasizing Iraqi national unity (thus trumping the former Bath Sunni figures) while attempting to divide the federalist/secession-minded Basrawis by drawing them into the central government.
    Years ago I studied similar issues to these when I did field research in Yemen, shortly after its civil war following a post-Cold War unification of North and South Yemen. Yemenis united
    in 1990 on the principle that northerners and southerners were all one people without divisions, but within a couple of years they were again divided over power sharing questions at central and local government levels. Soon southern socialists took up the call of federalism with regional autonomy, and northerners launched an aggressive military campaign in 1994 to defeat the “traitors” who turned against national unity. Since 1994 there remain many southerners who complain about being controlled by northern officials in the capital Sanaa. In 2001 the president of Yemen finally allowed local council elections, an event that led to much violence in many parts of the country. The resulting councils are very weak bodies, largely controlled by the president’s ruling party.
    What is further interesting about Yemen is that in the 1960s when the British began thinking about pulling out of the South and leaving their colony in Aden, they proposed a Federation of South Arabia between roughly two dozen southern sultans and emirs. Each emir and sultan was so jealous of the others that they could not agree on a leader, so the British adopted the rotating presidency model that Paul Bremer first used in Baghdad during the Transitional Government phase. In the case of South Yemen in the 1960s, the wider population rejected the idea of federalism, calling it an imperial plan of divide and rule. Two radical nationalist movements staged increasingly violent guerrila warfare against British troops, forcing them to withdraw in November 1967 without adopting federalism.
    Yemenis like South Africans remained unionist in their ideas, and I think this political philosophy is more likely to have an impact in Iraq. My suspicion all along is that federal schemes in Iraq will be perceived by the wider population as an imperial design for divide and rule. I think this accounts for much of the violent resistance to American troops, and sadly it accounts for much of the sectarian bloodshed. After March-April 2003 talk of federalism really poisoned the environment in Iraq. It was always popular among Kurds who prior to 2003 enjoyed a decade of experience with regional self-government under America’s “no-fly” protection. It was also popular among Iraqi exiles like Kanan Makiya in the US, who had visions of Madisonian democracy in his former homeland. The problem of federalism in Iraq and much of the Arab Muslim world is that it does seem like a divide and rule scheme pushed by westerners. Arabs and Muslim could greatly benefit from some mild forms of federal government, but only if it is adopted on their own. Staring down the barrels of American guns is not the way to convince Iraqis about the benefits of federal government. South Yemenis had the same problem with British guns in the 1960s; and the great irony after Yemen’s unity in 1990 was to see former socialist south Yemenis suddenly recognize the benefit of federalism when they began losing power to northerners in the capital Sanaa.

  7. Sd,
    Whatever those academic search for solutions for others problem I think in the end its nation call not those Politic / ideology driven academic.
    just one point here when the back in US suffering under the white whey not the given a state as their own state with US federalisation, also North Ireland whey not get separated from British and be independent state like East Timor?
    So tell those academics make your study to those issues at home and leave the rest in peace.

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