The Shadow of Saddam: The 1968 Coup and the Bonapartism of the Baath Party

This paper explores the extent to which Bonapartist dynamics influenced the Baath Party’s state-building project in Iraq following the 1968 coup. Focusing on the rule of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, it investigates the contradiction between the Baath Party’s ideological commitment to Arab unity, socialism, and popular democracy, and its increasing reliance on military power and authoritarian control. Using a qualitative, historically grounded analysis of speeches, party reports, and state documents, and drawing from Marxist theory, particularly the concept of Bonapartism, the study argues that al-Bakr’s regime exhibited key Bonapartist traits: the centralisation of authority, fusion of military and political leadership, and the use of populist-revolutionary rhetoric to mask coercive governance. Some deviations were observed, such as the absence of overt foreign adventurism and a continued, if constrained, role for party institutions. Power, however, became more kinship-related than military, with the Tikriti clan dominating the state. The groundwork laid during al-Bakr’s rule, by placing Tikriti kinsmen in high positions, directly enabled Saddam Hussein’s eventual authoritarian dominance. While certain ideological elements persisted in rhetoric and social policy, they were subordinated to regime consolidation. The findings suggest that Bonapartism is best viewed not as a rigid model but as a heuristic for exploring how revolutionary legitimacy can be co-opted to justify coercive state-building in periods of instability.