Reproducing the settlement : party-state patronage, muhasasa, and coercion in Iraq, 2005-2020

Iraq’s post-2003 political order is often described as fragile, eroding, or in continuous crisis. This thesis argues that this characterization misreads the case. The order is institutionally stable, in the specific sense that its underlying mechanisms reproduce themselves across the major shocks that have shaped post-2003 Iraqi politics. The thesis develops this argument through a structured comparison of two bounded episodes: the formative phase between January 2005 and June 2006, when the first elected post-occupation cabinet was assembled, and the reproductive phase between October 2019 and May 2020, when the Tishreen Uprising forced the resignation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi and the appointment of his successor. Three mechanisms anchor the argument: (1) elite cartelization through muhasasa, an ethno-sectarian power-sharing system that institutionalizes proportional bloc representation as the operative bargaining rule and allocates senior cabinet portfolios and bureaucratic positions through inter-bloc bargaining rather than technocratic criteria; (2) party-state patronage, which converts control of an allocated institution into staff, contracts, and resources for party networks; and (3) pluralized coercion, which distributes coercive capacity across state and party-aligned forces in ways that defend the political settlement while diffusing accountability. The argument is that each of these mechanisms is observable in both episodes through five empirical indicators: (1) portfolio division along bloc lines; (2) acting appointments in security ministries; (3) procurement alignment with party-linked firms; (4) weakened oversight; and (5) coercive involvement against political opponents. The methodology is process tracing applied to a dated, sourced timeline of 49 events drawn from a variety of primary and secondary sources. Each event is coded against the five indicators with explicit attention to source bias and single-source dependencies. The implication for the broader literature on regime durability is that institutional reproduction can survive both leadership turnover and mass mobilization when the underlying allocation logic remains intact, and its beneficiaries retain a shared interest in defending it.