| Abstract [eng] |
The paper deals with democratization of Iraq which was started to implement by the United States and its allies in March, 2003. The military operation was designed to find and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, overthrow the authoritarian regime of S. Hussein and install democratic institutions. Neoconservatives who were the authors and advocates of the idea of democratic Iraq believed that with the start in Iraq democracy gradually will spill over to the whole Middle East. And this process would guarantee the security of the United States and the whole world what is its’ national interest. Although Iraq has conducted free and fair elections and has established the main democratic institutions, today five years since the outset of the operation it is still not considered a stable democratic country. So the discrepancy between the factual and institutional democracy in Iraq is the main problem of this paper. This problem raises the principal research question: what causes the failure of democratization in Iraq? So according to the theoretical-methodological research concept the main question sounds as such: where the advocates of the intervention in Iraq have made the crucial mistake: whether the democratization of Iraq is theoretically impossible (ideological analysis level), maybe the failure of the project was determined by unsuitable democratization methods (especially the quick democratization) or maybe the misfortune lies in the domestic features of Iraq (practical analysis level). So the research method is the case study and the object – democracy in Iraq in institutional and social level. The analysis is divided into two levels: ideological and practical. The ideological level involves the analysis of neoconservatism (to reveal the genesis of the democratization idea) and the overview of the Muslim societies’ political experience and their attitude to the principles of democracy (to answer the question, whether Iraq democratization is theoretically possible). Practical level involves the investigation of the process of political system transformation, the evaluation of the current situation and the analysis whether and why Iraq matches the consolidated democracy criteria indicated by J. Linz and A. Stepan and suits the democratization conditions indicated by S. M. Lipset. This will help to find out what determines the failure of democracy in Iraq. The analysis of intervention in Iraq and its’ democratization process is quite a popular field of academic research and publications nowadays. Despite this, it should be noticed that the majority of investigations concentrates on the practical analysis of coalition forces actions and concrete problems of Iraq usually in order to give recommendations to G. W. Bush administration. This paper looks at the issue differently – from the perspective of democratization theories. Thus, the investigation results revealed that the failure to install a stable democratic political system in Iraq lies in practical level. The process is blocked by the domestic features of the country (it is fractured, antagonistic, based on “primordial allegiances”, has no national leaders, no future visions and overall is not prepared to govern itself independently) and unsuitable democratization methods (the process was initiated and conducted by foreign powers, without an adequate plan and preparation of the society). So the simple installation of democratic institutions does not guarantee a stable democracy. Whereas the ideological level (the influence of Islam) was not the main force which complicated the democratization, because Muslim societies in principle could live in states which are ruled by democratically. Moreover, according to the research results, the democratization of Iraq as the main reason for military intervention is also questionable. So other reasons for intervention which were not officially declared by US could be the topic of further studies. |
