The contradictions of democratization by force: the case of Iraq

Abstract

The article uses the Iraq example to show that the project of imposing democracy from outside by force is inherently contradictory and likely to fail, for reasons that go beyond the particular circumstances of the country or the Middle East. The paper then reviews a number of historical cases that have been supposed to show that democracy can result from armed invasion, and concludes that this was only so because in no case was imposing democracy the prime purpose of an invasion. Finally, it draws attention to the consequences for the quality of democracy at home in the countries most responsible for seeking to export democracy by force of arms.

Keywords:

• democratization
• Iraq
• coercive democratization
• self-determination
• legitimacy

Notes

Whitehead, ‘Losing “the Force”?’.

Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government, 206–7 .

Paul Wolfowitz, quoted in Sam Tanenhaus, ‘Bush's Brains Trust’, Vanity Fair, July 2003, 169.

Kampfner, Blair's Wars, 206–7.

Extract from speech in The Observer, November 18, 2007, 34.

Cox, ‘Empire? The Bush Doctrine’, 31–3; Risse, ‘Beyond Iraq’, 226–7.

Galbraith, The End of Iraq, 9–10; Kampfner, Blair's Wars, 159–60.

William Shawcross, ‘Democratic Dawn in Iraq’, The Guardian, 3 February 2009, 26.

See the epilogue to Fassihi, Waiting for an Ordinary Day; Jonathon Steele and Suzanne Goldberg, ‘What is the Real Death Toll in Iraq?’, special report for The Guardian, 19 March 2008.

Diamond, Squandered Victory, 279–313; also Galbraith, The End of Iraq, 9.

Rogers, Why We're Losing, 115–16; this is also the argument of Steele in Defeat: Why They Lost Iraq.

Mann, ‘The First Failed Empire’, 73–4.

Risse, ‘Beyond Iraq’, 227.

Quoted in Stothard, Thirty Days, 42 . For examples of Blair's speeches justifying the doctrine of military intervention, see Beetham, Byrne, Ngan, and Weir, Democracy Under Blair, 282; Sands, Lawless World, 202–3; see also the speech by Jonathon Powell mentioned above in note 5.

‘The Democratic Imperative’, speech, 12 February 2008, 3, www.fco.gov.uk

Bobbitt, Terror and Consent. See also the review by David Cole in New York Review of Books, 4 December 2008, 15–18.

Beetham, The Legitimation of Power, 28–37.

See for example Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, Chap. 2.

For a full account of these processes, see Cockburn, The Occupation.

Cockburn, ‘America Admits Failure’, London Review of Books, 18 December 2008, 11–12.

Sadiki, Rethinking Arab Democratization.

Whitehead, ‘Losing “the Force”?’. Naturally the apologists for liberal interventionism treated the series of military invasions as if they were a seamless web; see the speech by Powell in note 5 above.

For a definitive account of state collapse in Afghanistan, see Ahmed, Descent into Chaos.

Galbraith, The End of Iraq, 11–12; the cost is now reckoned at $3 trillion, Stiglitz and Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War.

Beetham, ‘Towards a Universal Framework’.

Hobson, Imperialism, 145–52.

Runciman, ed., Hutton and Butler, 125–30.