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SPECIAL REPORT 222 MAY 2009

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CONTENTS 

Introduction 2

The Conventional (Institutional) Wisdom 3

Experimental versus Observational Studies 5

Prewar Prescriptions 8

Postwar Postmortems 9

Civil War in Iraq: Institutions as Indicators 10

Antecedent Conditions: The Structure of Conflicts 11

Institutional Selection 12

Hedging: An Underlying Indicator 13

Recent Success, Future Stability: Does Institutional xx 

Engineering Provide the Foundation? 14

Conclusion: Do Institutions Matter? 15

ABOUT THE REPORT

David Waldner teaches courses on economic 

development, democratization, and methodology at the 

University of Virginia. He is the author of State Building 

and Late Development. His current book projects are 

Democracy and Dictatorship in the Post-Colonial World 

and Causation, Explanation, and the Study of Politics. His 

research on democracy and dictatorship in the Middle 

East has been supported by a grant from the 

United States Institute of Peace.

David Waldner

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t Post-conflict, post-totalitarian societies like Iraq possess many economic, political, 

social, and cultural characteristics that are not conducive to democratic governance. 

A central pillar of democracy promotion is that judicious institutional engineering—

crafting new institutions and other elements outlining the democratic rules of the 

game—can overcome these obstacles and engender stable democracies.

t Two theories explain the success or failure of institutional engineering: institutions as 

causes, or institutions as indicators. The first theory states that constitutions, electoral systems, and other components of democratic governance are the direct causes 

of democratic stability or collapse. The second theory states that institutions are 

indicators, not causes. Like barometers, they allow us to forecast impending storms 

or calm weather, but they do not cause these phenomena.

t Many methodological weaknesses are evident in the studies that supposedly support 

the “institutions as causes’’ theory. One type results from nonrandom selection of 

units. A second type results from nonrandom assignment to treatment. Left uncorrected, these weaknesses generate inaccurate and uncertain estimates of causal 

effects and may invalidate many studies of institutional design.

t Different types of methodological corrections for these biases exist, some statistical, others qualitative. All of them demand that we first model the selection process 

before estimating the effects of institutions; we must identify the origins of institutions to evaluate their effects correctly.

t By using a method called process tracing to scrutinize institutional engineering in 

Iraq, it becomes clear why intensified violence followed the drafting and ratification 

of the Iraqi constitution. It is not surprising that institutional engineering did not 

forestall violence; therefore, we can conclude that the Iraqi experience does not support theories of institutional design.

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t Although the “institutions as causes’’ approach claims that “getting the institutions right” can create a stable democracy in otherwise unfavorable conditions, it is 

imperative to view the studies that support it with skepticism. Nonetheless, these 

weaknesses do not completely dismiss the theory of institutional engineering. One 

study of one country can never produce a definitive conclusion. Instead, policymakers 

should pay closer attention to the methodological underpinnings of all findings based 

on case studies and other forms of observational research.

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All new democracies face challenges to their stability. These challenges are even 

greater in societies in which exceptionally severe conflicts trigger external intervention. 

Experience and theory suggest to many policymakers and analysts that institutional 

engineering—crafting new institutions and other elements outlining the democratic 

rules of the game—can engender and sustain democracy in these post-conflict situations. Careful drafting of constitutions, they argue, produces conditions in which former militants are willing to resolve conflicts peacefully and thus sustain democracy 

in seemingly inhospitable environments. Policy prescriptions derived from this belief 

were applied to Iraq in the period preceding the occupation and in the following years. 

Scholars looking ahead to postwar Iraq were chastened by the magnitude of the task. 

The prospects for democracy looked bleak. Religious and ethnic cleavages undermined 

national identity and threatened national unity. Iraq’s economy had been devastated by 

decades of war, mismanagement, and sanctions, leaving its middle class (often seen as 

a critical social pillar of democracy) impoverished. Iraqi political culture, with limited 

democratic resources to draw on, had been brutally transformed by decades of dictatorship. Yet, despite all these daunting obstacles, most analysts were cautiously optimistic: 

democracy could be established and sustained in Iraq as long as we were able to “get 

the institutions right.” As one contributor to a forum on how to democratize Iraq summarized the conventional wisdom about institutions, “Once an electoral system is actually established, politicians respond with remarkable predictability to the incentives it 

produces. The trick is to get those incentives right.”1

Practitioners agreed with this assessment. A report from the Rule of Law Program 

at the United States Institute of Peace maintained that in Iraq and other countries, 

“The constitution-making process can be a transformational one for societies, if properly organized and given adequate attention and resources.... In the case of Iraq, the 

importance of good constitutional process will be greater than ever; indeed, this process 

provides perhaps the only nonviolent opportunity for a workable compromise to be 

reached as to the shape of the Iraqi nation.”2

It is quite clear that something went awry in Iraq, as its democratic experience has 

not been consistent with initial expectations and hopes. The onset of a vicious intercommunal civil war accompanied the early years of Iraqi democracy. Although increased 

American troop levels and a new counterinsurgency campaign have halted the slide to 

full-scale civil war and brought better security, high levels of violence continue. Most 

observers do not believe that improved security has permitted or encouraged extensive 

political reconciliation. Iraq’s major political actors remain enmeshed in deep conflict 

and retain extraconstitutional mechanisms for enforcing their preferences. Institutional 

engineering, to date, has not been successful in Iraq. How shall we evaluate the promise 

and the limits of institutional engineering in light of that failure? The conventional wisdom supports two conclusions. First, institutional engineering is not a panacea. Given 

the unfortunate conditions in Iraq in 2003, institutional engineering has not been a 

shining success. Nonetheless, its outcomes are superior to some truly awful alternatives; 

we should not let the best become the enemy of the good. Second, institutional engiABOUT THE INSTITUTE

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, 

nonpartisan institution established and funded by 

Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve 

violent conflicts, promote post-conflict peacebuilding, 

and increase conflict management tools, capacity, and 

intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by 

empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, 

as well as by its direct involvement in conflict zones 

around the globe.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy, Washington, 

%$ t (FPSHF&.PPTF(Vice Chairman), Adjunct Professor 

of Practice, The George Washington University, Washington, 

%$ t "OOF)$BIO, Former Scholar in Residence, American 

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Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, School of Foreign 

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,IBO, President, Quality Care Consultants, LLC., Las Vegas, 

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Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations 

BU 4UBOGPSE 6OJWFSTJUZ t ,BUIMFFO.BSUJOF[, Executive Director, 

8PSME *OTUJUVUF PO %JTBCJMJUZ t +FSFNZ"3BCLJO, Professor of 

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Executive Vice President, International Republican Institute, 

8BTIJOHUPO
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Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 

MEMBERS EX OFFICIO

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$MJOUPO
 4FDSFUBSZ PG 4UBUF t 3JDIBSE)4PMPNPO, President, 

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8JMTPO, Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps; President, 

National Defense University.

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily 

reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace, 

which does not advocate specific policy positions.

To request permission to photocopy or reprint materials, 

e-mail: permissions@usip.org


neering could have produced better results if the process had been managed differently 

and the final agreements had incorporated what we now know to be superior arrangements. The failure of constitution making to stabilize politics in Iraq was a missed 

opportunity stemming from a flawed process, not a flawed theory.

There are important methodological reasons, however, to evaluate institutional engineering with caution. Confidence in the democracy-promoting power of institutional 

engineering rests on insecure foundations. The vast majority of our knowledge about 

the process of constitution making and the effects of political institutions is based on 

nonexperimental knowledge that is subject to a much higher degree of uncertainty than 

scholars and practitioners currently acknowledge.3

Without careful attention to critical methodological issues, conclusions based on 

case study research are subject to severe bias and may reach incorrect conclusions. 

Closer attention to methodology may suggest that institutions do not have the strong 

causal powers attributed to them. In contrast to the theory of institutional design, an 

alternative hypothesis argues that, in some contexts, a broad set of political, economic, 

social, and cultural conditions are generally conducive to democratic stability. In other 

contexts, including Iraq through the end of 2008, conditions are so inhospitable to 

democracy that no process of constitution making or institution building can engender 

democratic stability.4

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Political scientists have advanced two theories explaining how properly designed institutions secure democracy. These two accounts are based on starkly different assumptions and advance very different prescriptions. The power-sharing school argues that 

deep sociocultural divisions present the greatest threat to democracy. The lesson for 

institutional engineers is that divided societies can best secure democracy if institutions encourage grand coalitions uniting cohesive political parties representing distinct 

cultural blocs. Stability is reached because representatives of all the major societal 

groups participate in decision making while each group retains autonomy in subnational 

affairs. The combination of power-sharing and autonomy convince otherwise hostile 

groups to cooperate within a democratic system.5 Alternatively, and in direct contrast, 

the induced-moderation school recommends institutions that encourage parties and 

politicians to moderate their extreme chauvinistic temptations and to build constituencies across cultural blocs, blurring the boundaries between cultural communities. One 

approach thus advocates compromise between groups; the other advocates building 

new communities across group lines.

Both theoretical approaches tacitly posit a three-stage sequence of compromise, 

crafting, and consolidation. In the compromise stage, the parties renounce militancy 

and embark on a constitution-making process. In the crafting stage, the parties enter 

into negotiations, select institutions of democratic governance, and supervise their 

implementation. In the consolidation stage, the new institutions enforce the democratic rules of the game. Thus, properly crafted institutions secure democracy. 

What is wrong with this seemingly reasonable reconstruction of the steps leading 

to democratic stability? Institutional-engineering theorists assert that democracy 

becomes “the only game in town” when the proper institutions are put in place. They 

attribute causal influence primarily to the third and final stage in which institutions 

enforce democratic outcomes, and secondarily to the middle stage of constitution 

making. This causal assertion may be incorrect because the prior decision to 

compromise may itself be more important than the institutional embodiment of that 

compromise. If the relevant actors enter into the second and third stages of the process 

having already made a firm commitment to cooperation and democratic procedures, 

There are important methodological 

reasons to evaluate institutional 

engineering with caution. Confidence 

in the democracy-promoting power 

of institutional engineering rests on 

insecure foundations.


then the dynamics of the constitution-making process and the specific institutions that 

result may exercise an only marginal causal effect. If prior attitudes and commitments 

are key to democratic stability, then institutions operate as indicators of underlying 

attitudes and not as direct causes of the stable and consensual politics generated by 

those underlying attitudes.6

For example, one account of the Nigerian transition from military rule to democracy 

in 1978 noted that the Nigerian civil war came to an end only when civilian leaders 

realized that they were not likely to win the next round of conflict. As violence became 

less useful, they turned their attention to rebuilding democracy.7 Note the subtle but 

significant difference: it was not institutional engineering that ended the civil war, 

but the perception that civil war would not allow politicians to achieve their goals 

that engendered new appreciation for institutions. This observation thus suggests a 

contrary and noninstitutional perspective that emphasizes the factors and conditions 

that influence attitudes toward accommodation and compromise before the crafting 

stage. The noninstitutional perspective highlights the conditions under which actors 

develop preferences for one type of political regime over another. Most important, we 

must identify the structure of conflicts dividing the relevant political actors, along 

with the calculations actors make about how best to achieve their interests given those 

conflicts. Relatively modest conflicts might generate conciliatory attitudes and resilient 

democracies, while more intense and unbridgeable conflicts generate attitudes that are 

not conducive to democratic practices, such that no “rules of the game” produce reliably 

democratic politics. 

The distinction between attributing causal effects to institutions and attributing 

causal effects to prior attitudes and conditions is of enormous significance. If the 

noninstitutionalist perspective is correct, it tells us that transferring institutions into 

inhospitable terrain will not produce the intended outcomes.8 It is thus of central 

importance to the fields of conflict resolution and democracy promotion that we correctly identify the relevant causal factors. 

To make this evaluation, we thus need to recognize three rival interpretations of the 

relationship of institutions to democratic viability: 

1. Institutions as Causes: institutions have large and predictable causal effects, 

and “getting the institutions right” can create democratic stability in otherwise 

unfavorable environments.

2. Institutions as Indicators: institutions are like barometers: they indicate 

a coming storm, but they are not causes of the storm. Given widespread 

willingness to compromise among the relevant political actors, a wide array 

of institutions is fully consistent with democratic politics. Uncompromising 

attitudes, on the other hand, will be left unchanged by seemingly wellconstructed institutions.

3. Institutions as Strong Indicators and Weak Causes: institutions both indicate 

underlying attitudes and exercise some independent causal effects. These 

effects are not sufficiently large to make the difference between a robust and 

a highly fragile democracy. Rules matter, but only at the margins: they shape 

outcomes within democracies, but rarely do they make a decisive difference 

transforming autocracies into democracies. 

The first scenario is the conventional wisdom. The second scenario is what methodologists call a null hypothesis, one that denies the causal relationship stated by the 

hypothesis being evaluated. The burden of proof is placed on the investigator to reject 

the null hypothesis. This rule is a very important safeguard against various forms of 

confirmation bias—the tendency to emphasize confirming evidence and downplay disconfirming evidence. The third hypothesis is a hybrid scenario that recognizes that the 

rules of the game are not totally without causal influence. We know that democracies 

If the noninstitutionalist 

perspective is correct, it tells us 

that transferring institutions 

into inhospitable terrain will not 

produce the intended outcomes.


differ from one another, that some of these differences may be attributable to their 

institutions, and that if we alter democratic institutions, we will see some marginal 

effects in the partisan composition of governments and the policies they pursue. These 

differences are not decisive in securing a democracy from threats to its collapse; rather, 

they exercise marginal effects in democracies whose stability is well secured by a host 

of cultural, economic, and social factors. 

Figuring out whether institutions are causes, indicators, or some hybrid is not an 

easy task. We cannot resolve this debate by standard methods of observing a set of 

countries, cataloguing their institutions, and then attributing the durability of democracy to the associated institutions. This research strategy is very common, but it is 

fundamentally flawed. To understand why, we need to consider the critical distinction 

between experimental and observational studies. Understanding this distinction will 

yield important instructions for how to measure the causal effects of institutions. 

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Since mid-2004, Iraqi citizens have gone to the polls four times under different 

electoral arrangements: twice to elect a parliament, once to ratify the constitution, 

and once to elect provincial council members. Over the same period, Iraqi politicians 

negotiated both a transitional law and a permanent constitution. They then entered 

into negotiations to amend and extend that constitution and altered the electoral 

system. It seems natural to refer to Iraq as a laboratory for institutional engineering 

where we can conduct a great experiment in post-conflict institutional therapies. But 

the lab-experiment metaphor is highly misleading. Engineers and medical researchers 

conduct their studies under highly controlled conditions. Policymakers and scholars of 

new democracies rarely enjoy the luxury of genuine experiments; they must work with 

the weaker substitute of observational studies. It is crucial to acknowledge the gap 

between these two types of studies.

Consider a basic question about the causal effects of an intervention: Does a new 

vaccine prevent epidemics?9 Questions like this are generally settled by a randomized 

controlled experiment. First, experimenters draw a random sample from the population 

of interest. Put very simply, this means that if every member of the population has the 

same likelihood of being selected, the sample will be representative of the population, 

and inferences made about the sample can be generalized to the population. Next, 

experimenters randomly assign each subject to one of two groups: a treatment group 

and a control group. Random assignment ensures that the two groups will be quite 

similar; on average, they will have the same background characteristics. Following random assignment, the experimenter manipulates the intervention, giving the vaccine to 

the treatment group and a placebo to the control group. After the vaccine is administered, experimenters monitor the groups and measure the rate at which they contract 

the disease. If the two groups contract the disease at the same rate, we conclude that 

the vaccine does not have the desired causal effect. If vaccinated persons contract the 

disease at a statistically significant lower rate, we conclude that the vaccine has the 

desired effect. We can make this inference with a high degree of confidence because 

random assignment made the two groups roughly equal, so any differences in the rate 

of illness can be attributed to the vaccine.

In the absence of random assignment, our inferences are much more uncertain and 

much more vulnerable to bias. Suppose the two groups differ on some relevant variable, such as family income. Income might be related to the likelihood of contracting 

the disease, for example by affecting nutrition or hygiene. Factors like income that 

might independently affect the likelihood of the disease are called confounding factors. If the vaccine is given only to wealthy persons and the placebo given only to poor 

Policymakers and scholars of new 

democracies rarely enjoy the luxury 

of genuine experiments; they must 

work with the weaker substitute 

of observational studies.


persons, then income (and the better nutrition that income can purchase) might cause 

the difference in postvaccine rates of disease, not the vaccine. Controlled experiments generate reliable knowledge because randomization is a powerful antidote to 

confounding variables. 

We might then imagine an experiment in which all post-conflict nations are randomly 

assigned to treatment and control groups such that, on average, the two groups have 

similar characteristics: similar levels of wealth, similar degrees of ethnic heterogeneity, 

and other relevant factors. Nations in the treatment group are given institutional formats considered to be optimal; nations in the control group are given an institutional 

placebo. After a few years, we see whether the treatment group retains democracy at a 

higher rate than the control group. But for obvious reasons, conducting such an experiment would be extremely infeasible.10

Observational studies are the only feasible recourse for studying the role of institutions. In an observational study, subjects assign themselves to the control and treatment groups, while scholars and policymakers observe the outcomes. In the absence of 

random assignment, controlling for confounding variables becomes far more difficult, 

estimates of causal effects will be biased, and hence there will be greater uncertainty 

about the validity of the derived lessons because alternative explanations will be difficult to dismiss.

Two types of bias plague observational studies.11 The first stems from a nonrandom 

assignment mechanism, a procedure that places subjects into control and treatment 

groups. A random mechanism controls for confounding variables, whereas a nonrandom mechanism usually introduces bias. For example, if we conceive of public and 

private schools as the treatment and control groups, we know that people choose 

these schools based on a host of factors, including family income and motivation. If 

income, motivation, and other possible assignment mechanisms are associated with 

school performance, then a methodologically naive study that omits these factors will 

attribute to school type (public versus private) the causal influence actually exercised 

by these confounding factors. That misattribution of causal effect is what methodologists call bias. 

Studies of institutional engineering should be especially sensitive to omitted variable bias because we know that, just as income and status affect the preference for 

private over public schools, the economic, social, and political environment influences 

institutional selection. Consider two nations that embark on constitution making. The 

political leadership of nation A selects a particular constitutional blueprint, one that is 

endorsed by leading theorists of democratic stability. The leadership of nation B selects 

a constitutional blueprint that is disparaged by those same leading theorists. Over time, 

democracy endures in nation A, while nation B collapses into anarchy. Shall we say that 

institutional engineering worked? That conclusion would be entirely premature, for we 

have not ascertained whether nation A had some characteristic that both predisposed 

its leaders toward the preferred institutional choice and also made democracy more 

stable. In the language of contemporary methodology, institutional selection must be 

endogenized: analysis of institutional effects must first consider institutional origins. 

Only after we have taken account of institutional origins can we make unbiased estimates of institutions’ causal effects. 

The second major source of bias involves nonrandom sample selection, or selection bias. Because the sample is not randomly chosen from the population, the units 

included in an observational study are not likely to be representative of the broader 

population. For example, a study of two dozen instances of post-conflict, constitutionmaking processes is not a random selection from the population of all nondemocratic 

nations, for the sample consists only of those nations that have decided, if only temporarily, to enter into a constitution-making process. Presumably, the decision to enter 

such a process reflects some other factors. Consider two groups of nations suffering 

internal conflicts. In nations of type A, all of the participants in the conflict reach 

Studies of institutional 

engineering should be 

especially sensitive to omitted 

variable bias because the 

economic, social, and political 

environment influences 

institutional selection. 
7

the conclusion that they cannot unilaterally win a military victory, that fighting is no 

longer a viable option, and that they must compromise with other parties. Nations of 

type A enter the sample of nations engaged in constitution making, and, hence, they 

are included in the study. In nations of type B, on the other hand, one or more parties 

to the conflict believes that it has the military resources to achieve unilateral victory 

and its goals without compromise. Nations of type B do not enter the sample of nations 

engaged in constitution making and so cannot be included in the study. The nonrandom 

selection mechanism is the belief that military victory is not possible, and so compromise is necessary. Clearly, these beliefs are correlated with democratic governance. 

Without appropriate corrections, the study will reach biased conclusions. 

Despite these weaknesses, statistical techniques and case-study methods do exist 

that can compensate for the general inability to assign nations randomly to treatment 

and control groups. One such technique is called matching. For every subject who selects 

herself into a treatment group, investigators search for comparable subjects (e.g., similar background, similarly motivated) who did not receive the treatment. If the investigator can successfully match treated and nontreated subjects on many characteristics, 

it becomes increasingly reasonable to treat the decision to enter the treatment group 

as random. In other words, if we balance the characteristics of the treatment and control groups so that the two groups are, on average, equal, then we can make unbiased 

estimates of the treatment’s effect. The success of a technique like matching depends 

entirely on the ability to create comparable groups. There is a healthy dose of art mixed 

in with the science, and improper matching can be more harmful than helpful.12

The major lesson is that we need to examine very carefully the methodological 

underpinnings of any study that estimates the causal effects of institutions, and that 

we should treat with great skepticism studies that omit a model of the selection process. This maxim suggests that a great deal of what we thought we knew about institutions may prove to be wrong. Consider the question of parliamentary versus presidential 

systems. It has long been alleged that presidential systems are more vulnerable to 

breakdown than parliamentary systems. Based on observational studies, we know that 

the average lifespan of a parliamentary system is more than twice that of presidential 

systems. But these early studies did not simultaneously study the origins of presidential 

and parliamentary systems. One recent and methodologically sound analysis finds that 

presidential systems are much more likely to succeed military dictatorships than civilian 

dictatorships. Democracies that follow military dictatorships, moreover, are more likely 

to collapse than democracies that follow civilian dictatorships. Once we control for the 

origins of presidential and parliamentary systems, the independent causal effect of 

those institutions disappears. To quote the study

[S]ome democracies emerge in countries where the probability of a democratic 

breakdown is high, regardless of the type of democracy that exists, and 

presidential democracies have emerged more frequently in such countries. Thus, 

the fragility of presidential democracies is a function not of presidentialism per se 

but of the fact that presidential democracies have existed in countries where the 

environment is inhospitable for any kind of democratic regime.13

Evaluating the causal effect of institutions is more difficult than many theorists 

and practitioners have recognized. We cannot simply read off institutional effects from 

outcomes, attributing democratic failures to bad institutions and democratic successes 

to good institutions. Among the many threats to validity, this report has emphasized 

the need to identify selection effects, whereby political actors assign themselves to 

treatment or control groups; that is to say, influenced in no small part by background 

conditions, they select their institutions. The result is that the effects of background 

conditions become confounded with the effects of institutions, making causal 

appraisal difficult. These problems can, in principle, be solved by careful attention to 

research procedures, but far too many conclusions have already been drawn from studWe cannot simply read off 

institutional effects from outcomes, 

attributing democratic failures to 

bad institutions and democratic 

successes to good institutions. 
ies that were not methodologically sound. It appears that overly casual approaches to 

profound methodological challenges have contributed, as one meta-analysis suggests, 

to the widespread belief that “democracy and federalism are easily developed in places 

like Iraq.”14

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Were analysts fooled into thinking that institutional engineering could permit democracy to be established in Iraq? A number of publications appeared in 2002 and 2003 

with prescriptions for how to build democracy in Iraq.15 The authors of these blueprints 

understood very well the many obstacles to Iraqi democracy, but they drew on past 

experience and scholarly analysis to argue that institutional design could, if done 

correctly, overcome these many impediments to stable democracy. The success of the 

project, all agreed, hinged on “getting the institutions right.” 

Two profound problems appear in these proposals. First, while individual blueprints 

were all plausible, they did not agree with one another. On almost every component of 

constitutional design, scholars made nonoverlapping, even contradictory, prescriptions. 

Second, none of the architects of Iraqi democracy based their design on sound methodological principles or a sturdy evidentiary base.

t (PWFSONFOUBM4USVDUVSF Many of the blueprints cautioned that presidential systems 

produce zero-sum conflicts and rigidity. These scholars prescribed a parliamentary system. Other blueprints, however, made a strong case for a presidential system, some of 

which had a directly elected president and some with an indirectly elected president. 

One blueprint split the difference, calling for a hybrid system with a weak president 

and a prime minister, topped off by a constitutional monarchy.

t &MFDUPSBM4ZTUFN One blueprint argued from the American experience that a “winnertake-all’’ system would encourage centrism and dilute ideological extremism as candidates were forced to cling to the middle ground. The majority of blueprints disagreed, 

calling instead for a system of proportional representation that would guarantee that 

no constituencies were permanently excluded from some position in the government. 

Yet, even these prescriptions differed from one another on the all-important details 

of how to organize proportional representation. 

t 'FEFSBMJTN All of the blueprints endorsed federalism. But their visions of how to 

implement federalism dramatically diverged. One advocated drawing the boundaries of regional governments “along ethnic and/or religious lines so that the three 

major groups have significant control over their own political, social, and economic 

affairs.”16 A rival blueprint strongly disagreed, cautioning that dividing Iraq’s administration along ethnic lines would “only entrench current divisions and might even 

lead to ethnic cleansing.”17

These differences are not slight matters of emphasis that can be fudged. If one 

blueprint insists on drawing federal lines along existing ethnic boundaries and a second blueprint insists that such a system would encourage ethnic cleansing, then there 

is little room for compromise. Indeed, what is striking is that scholars based their 

blueprints on irreconcilable theoretical accounts. Some were based on what political 

scientists call power-sharing theory, which argues that democracy is best secured in 

divided societies if institutions encourage grand coalitions uniting cohesive political parties representing distinct cultural blocs. Others were based on the theory of 

induced moderation, which seeks to moderate chauvinistic temptations and to build 

constituencies across cultural communities. This was no small difference: one advocate 

of power sharing argued that induced moderation suffers from crippling weaknesses 

and should never be contemplated.18 An advocate of induced moderation countered 

8

On almost every component of 

constitutional design, scholars 

made nonoverlapping, even 

contradictory, prescriptions. 
with a warning against power sharing, citing the cautionary tale of Lebanon, where 

power sharing has “further polarized ethnic groups in a way that intensifies political 

instability and even violent conflict.”19

None of these proposals were based on the results of experiments or research 

designs that might successfully replicate random assignment and experimental controls. They were based on anecdotal data and nonsystematic references to case studies 

whose methodological underpinnings should be treated with suspicion. Each element 

of each prescription was based on at least one observation that the institution in 

question had been effective in at least one democracy. Such permissive use of evidence suggests that a very wide range of institutions is compatible with democratic 

stability if the background conditions are appropriate.

1PTUXBS1PTUNPSUFNT

The “institutions as causes” approach assumes that prior political, economic, social, or 

cultural factors do not indelibly influence the process of negotiating an institutional 

framework for democratic governance. Wise management of the process can get actors to 

the table to hammer out a compromise; inept management, on the other hand, produces 

flawed institutions that lack popular legitimacy and cannot secure democratic stability. 

The process of institutional engineering in Iraq began in 2004 with the drafting 

of the Transitional Administrative Law; continued through elections for a provisional 

parliament, the formation of an interim government, and the appointment of a constitution-drafting committee; and ended in late 2005 with the drafting and ratification 

of a constitution and the first elections for a permanent parliament. By mid-2005, 

observers were beginning to worry about the dynamics and implications of the entire 

process. By the end of 2006, with the constitution ratified and parliamentary elections held, observers registered more emphatic concerns that the entire constitutional 

process had “gone awry” and produced a deeply flawed set of arrangements. Looking 

back on that process, one scholar of constitutions observed, “Neither the process nor 

the document it produced proved to be helpful, however, in founding a stable and just 

political community. If anything, the Iraqi constitutional effort aggravated the slide 

toward civil war.”20

What went wrong? One veteran observer worried that the process was becoming 

overly inclusive and complex at the expense of speed. Three months passed between 

elections and the formation of the first government, raising fears of stalemated and 

ineffective rule that would be unable to solve pressing issues. The long delay was 

caused by the desire to include Sunni Arabs and Kurds in the government, along with 

the Shiite Arab parties that had gained the largest share of seats in Parliament. According to this diagnosis, bringing together Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds meant apportioning 

posts demographically. While such arrangements might defer conflict in the short term, 

staffing the state and government by ethnic allocation would likely enhance intraethnic 

solidarity and exacerbate interethnic hostility “as citizens come to favor the interests of 

their various in-groups over the general good of the whole community. This is a recipe 

for civil breakdown or even state collapse.”21

One year later, as the final form of the constitution took shape, observers made 

precisely the opposite criticism: that inclusiveness had been sacrificed for speed. 

According to the International Crisis Group, “The Bush administration chose to sacrifice inclusiveness for the sake of an arbitrary deadline.... As a result, the constitutionmaking process became a new stake in the political battle rather than an instrument 

to resolve it.” This flawed process undermined consensus and marginalized Sunni Arabs 

in the political process. Unless reversed, the report warned, this process “is likely to 

fuel rather than dampen the insurgency, encourage ethnic and sectarian violence, and 

hasten the country’s violent break-up.”22


10

It is no easy task to reconcile a criticism of overinclusiveness with a criticism of 

underinclusiveness. Neither is it readily apparent that a less-rushed process would have 

induced the participants to put the national interest above their partisan and parochial 

interests. The core issues and struggles for power that polarized Iraqi politics and 

motivated violence predated the constitution-making process, and struggles by each 

party to advance partisan interests continued unabated throughout. The constitutionmaking process was not, as one report termed it, “an opportunity lost”23; rather, the 

dynamics and outcomes of the process followed directly from the preferences of the 

leaders of Iraq’s major sociopolitical communities.

These critiques of the constitutional process also implicitly reveal a little noticed 

dilemma. On the one hand, institutions are viewed as mechanisms that facilitate 

conflict resolution and democratic stability. On the other hand, political parties are 

expected to consensually select the institutions charged with the responsibility of 

creating consensus. Political actors are somehow to resolve their conflicts and negotiate in good faith over institutions whose importance lies in their ability to resolve 

conflicts. In other words, institutions themselves are expected to be both a prerequisite and result of the constitution-making process—creating an impossible dilemma 

in many cases. 

A report issued by the United States Institute of Peace, for example, explicitly 

noted that competing visions of the future Iraqi state repeatedly undermined the 

constitution-making process—not the structure of the institutions themselves. It 

is evidently not the management of the process that is at fault, but rather the preexisting structure of conflicts that heavily stacks the deck against compromise.

$JWJM8BSJO*SBR*OTUJUVUJPOTBT*OEJDBUPST 

Contrasting with the “institutions as causes” theory, the “institutions as indicators” 

approach suggests that pre-existing conditions will heavily influence the process of 

institutional selection, and that these conditions are of greater causal influence than 

the institutions themselves. To test this hypothesis, we need to correct for the bias 

introduced by nonrandom assignment. Instead of assuming that prior conditions do 

not matter and beginning the analysis with the process of constitution making, we 

need to extend our scrutiny further back to look for traces of this influence using 

a methodology that social scientists call process tracing.24 This involves compiling 

evidence about the links between successive steps in a long causal chain. We look for 

the traces of the relevant causal processes, searching for links between antecedent 

conditions, underlying attitudes (such as compromising or unyielding bargaining positions), and the subsequent process of institutional selection. The goal is to correct 

the bias induced by nonrandom assignment by gaining insight into the assignment 

process itself. 

In Iraq, these antecedent conditions were not propitious for democracy. If institutions act as indicators and not as causes, then when conditions are inhospitable, we 

should not expect to observe repeated instances of compromise as actors converge on 

what they believe to be optimal democratic institutions. Instead, we should expect to 

see actors exploiting the process of institutional selection to secure more permanent 

advantage. In addition, given an inhospitable environment for democracy, we should 

see actors “hedging,” or reserving autonomous control over resources that would 

allow them to achieve their goals without being constrained by constitutional provisions. By adopting uncompromising negotiating positions, and by reserving access to 

extraconstitutional sources of influence, actors demonstrate their unwillingness to 

submit to binding procedural mechanisms of conflict resolution. Process tracing thus 

The constitution-making process 

was not, as one report termed it, 

“an opportunity lost”; rather, the 

dynamics and outcomes of the 

process followed directly from the 

preferences of the leaders of Iraq’s 

major sociopolitical communities.

Given an inhospitable 

environment for democracy, we 

should see actors “hedging,” or 

reserving autonomous control 

over resources that would allow 

them to achieve their goals 

without being constrained by 

constitutional provisions.
11

demonstrates why the constitution-making process was a failure, and why Iraq’s new 

democratic institutions were founded just as the country was sliding to civil war.

"OUFDFEFOU$POEJUJPOT5IF4USVDUVSFPG$POGMJDUT

Analysts point to a host of historical, political, economic, social, and cultural conditions that make democracy difficult in Iraq. To argue that institutions are causes is to 

argue that institution building occurs in isolation from these conditions, and that the 

proper institutions compensate for these pre-existing disadvantages. This assumption 

is widespread among advocates of institutional engineering, but it often rests on very 

slender evidence. It is true, for example, that some poor countries, such as India, have 

democratized. But pointing to this fact hardly substitutes for systematic consideration 

of how antecedent conditions might shape institutions. 

Conversely, to argue that institutions are indicators is to argue that antecedent 

conditions decisively shape institutional selection and democratic outcomes. According to eminent democracy theorist Robert Dahl, the intensity of the conflict separating 

two groups determines the probability that a government will permit the opposition 

to participate effectively in politics. Great conflicts generate high costs of toleration: 

each party will consider its opponents’ ability to shape policy effectively to be highly 

threatening. When conditions produce these intense conflicts, each party will seek to 

obstruct its opponents’ access to policymaking instruments. When conflicts are intense 

and compromise unattainable without sacrificing core goals and interests, we should 

expect parties to adopt uncompromising attitudes toward the rules of the game, to 

support institutions that best protect their core interests, to deny advantage or accommodation to opponents, and to refuse to relinquish control over extraconstitutional 

resources protecting core interests. Honest constitutional crafting and compromise 

occur only in low-stakes settings where conflicts can be resolved via rule of law. 

What were the costs of toleration in postwar Iraq? Nathan Brown, who has closely 

observed Iraq’s constitution-drafting process, writes,

The divisions among Iraq’s major communities are not based on petty rivalries 

but on deep divisions, legitimate grievances, and understandable concerns. 

Such divisions are hardly timeless ... but they are proving increasingly difficult 

to surmount. Indeed, a disinterested but sympathetic observer would have no 

trouble understanding not only the goals of the various parties but also the 

reasons why their goals provoke mistrust among other Iraqis.25

The sources of this intense conflict are well known. Sunni Arabs wish to regain their 

dominant position within the state; Shiite Arabs wish to assert their dominance and 

relegate their Sunni-Arab tormenters to a subordinate political status; and Kurds wish 

to maximize their autonomy in the north. 

These intercommunal conflicts are in turn rendered more complex by a series of 

intracommunal conflicts that have produced fighting between rival Shiite militias in 

the south. Superimposed onto this core inter- and intracommunal conflict are divisions 

over the role of religion in politics and the relative strength of the central state versus 

the provinces. And if these problems were not sufficient to derail institutional engineering, Iraq’s oil resources are a tremendous motivator of conflict. Oil wealth breeds 

conflict by destabilizing both politics and economics, by aggravating ethnic cleavages 

and encouraging separatism, and by financing insurgencies. Oil has this effect because 

it “both exacerbates latent tensions and gives governments and their more militant 

opponents the means to fight them out.”26

Great conflicts generate high costs of 

toleration: each party will consider 

its opponents’ ability to shape policy 

effectively to be highly threatening.

Oil wealth breeds conflict by 

destabilizing both politics and 

economics, by aggravating ethnic 

cleavages and encouraging separatism, 

and by financing insurgencies.
12

*OTUJUVUJPOBM4FMFDUJPO

These profound conflicts and the high costs of cooperation and concessions they generated 

had a readily observable effect on institutional selection. It should come as no surprise 

that observers described constitution making as having worsened the country’s breaches, 

not healed them. Using the method of process tracing described above, we can break 

down constitution-making process step-by-step. This method shows that at every point, 

key players adopted uncompromising positions, tried to hijack the process to prevent 

rivals from having input, or demanded that key decisions be deferred to the future: 

1. Sunni Arabs boycott the January 2005 elections to the transitional assembly.

2. The United States applies pressure to include Sunni Arabs in the constitutiondrafting committee. Kurdish and Shiite Arab legislators reluctantly agree to 

restricted Sunni-Arab participation. Sunni Arabs join the committee in July 2005, 

just five weeks prior to the initial August 15 deadline.

3. The constitution-drafting committee is dissolved in early August 2005 following 

futile attempts to break the stalemate and achieve consensus.

4. The constitution-making process continues, conducted through an informal 

“Leadership Council” composed of leading Kurdish and Shiite Arab politicians who 

meet in private residences in the Green Zone.

5. The final draft of the constitution largely reflects a compact between the leaders 

of the major Kurdish and Shiite Arab parties, a compact whose broad outlines had 

been negotiated by exiled political leaders in a series of meetings held outside 

Iraq prior to 2003.27 This Shiite Arab–Kurdish compact reflects neither an effort 

at an all-inclusive grand bargain based on power sharing, nor an effort to craft 

institutions that would induce moderation and centrism. Instead, the constitution 

embodies maximalist positions of both the Shiite Arabs and Kurds, while reserving 

for each community opportunities to heighten communal autonomy and maximize 

particularistic benefits. The constitution contains components deeply antithetical 

to Sunni-Arab interests, including a hard-line stance against the Baath Party, a 

deeply decentralized federal government with the possibility for further regional 

autonomy bordering on de facto partition, and the absence of central control 

and equitable distribution of oil revenues. Leaders of the major Shiite Arab and 

Kurdish parties present the Sunni-Arab delegation with a fait accompli that makes 

virtually no concessions. Given the Sunni-Arab–based insurgency and the growing 

interethnic civil war that has surrounded the constitution-drafting period, it 

appears that Shiite Arab and Kurdish parties are not willing to sacrifice their goals 

on behalf of democratic stability. Presented with a completed draft and asked, 

in effect, to take it or leave it, Sunni Arabs vote overwhelmingly to reject the 

constitution in the October 15 referendum.

6. A new electoral law is introduced for the December 2005 elections. The new 

system features proportional representation with 230 of the 275 seats in the 

Assembly allocated to Iraq’s 18 governorates, whose voters would cast ballots for 

party lists. A system of national compensation would allocate the remaining 45 

seats to parties whose percentage of the national vote exceeds their percentage of 

seats among the initial allocation of 230. This electoral format converges on the 

type of arrangement that at least some experts argue should mitigate chauvinism 

and thus cultivate more centrist parties and politicians capable of building 

alliances across sectarian divides. Far from fulfilling these hopes, the December 

2005 elections demonstrate the deep entrenchment of narrow, sectarian parties 

at the expense of secular and transethnic parties. The new and improved electoral 

system simply returns the three major sectarian blocs to parliament, where they 

could resume conflicts left unresolved by the drafting of the constitution.28

7. A lengthy suspension of parliamentary activity follows the December 2005 

elections. Not only does the Iraqi parliament fail to make substantial progress 

The December 2005 elections 

demonstrate the deep entrenchment 

of narrow, sectarian parties at the 

expense of secular and transethnic 

parties. The new and improved 

electoral system simply returns 

the three major sectarian blocs 

to parliament, where they could 

resume conflicts left unresolved by 

the drafting of the constitution.


over the next two years on a single issue left unresolved by the constitutiondrafting committee, but it largely ceases to operate since the vast majority of 

delegates either live abroad or refuse to make the perilous journey to the Green 

Zone.29 The failure to make any progress on constitutional reform is explicitly 

endorsed by key Iraqi leaders, such as Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the 

Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

8. The January 2008 passage of reformed de-Baathification legislation, initially seen 

as a sign of progress, is not a major alteration of laws that had alienated Iraq’s 

Sunni Arabs. Indeed, the new legislation actually extends de-Baathification to 

previously unaffected organizations, including the judiciary.30

9. Negotiations over a new provincial election law are stalemated for two months 

in summer 2008. The primary obstacle is the constitution’s Article 140, which 

concerns the status of the hotly contested Kirkuk. Article 140 requires that 

displaced persons be returned to Kirkuk, a census of the city’s population, and a 

referendum over its future status. As tensions mount, sectarian violence explodes, 

and Iraqi security and Kurdish peshmerga forces come perilously close to military 

confrontation in August 2008. The compromise reached in September schedules 

long-delayed provincial elections for January 2009 but excludes the three 

governorates of the Kurdish region, as well as the province containing Kirkuk 

itself. In other words, on the key issue of Kirkuk’s status, as well as the status of 

other Kurdish territorial claims, the parties agree to not reach an agreement.

10. No agreement is reached over the distribution of oil revenues. In the absence 

of agreement, the Kurdish Regional Government begins to sign independent 

contracts with oil companies, in contrast to the wishes of Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite 

Arab parties, which want the central state to have authority over the country’s 

oil. As a result, one study finds, “the struggle over oil and revenue sharing 

legislation is helping to fuel conflict between Arab and Kurdish nationalism and 

competing visions of Iraqi national identity.”31

When we trace the processes surrounding Iraq’s constitution making, it becomes 

clear that the drafting of a constitution and the selection of electoral institutions 

have not been mechanisms for conflict resolution and accommodation: they have been 

instruments of intercommunal competition and conflict. The deep and bitter divisions 

within Iraqi society and polity have driven the process of institutional selection. That 

institutional engineering has failed simply reflects these underlying conflicts. Institutions are not causes of failure; they are indicators that the underlying structure of the 

conflicts is generating failure.

)FEHJOH"O6OEFSMZJOH*OEJDBUPS

Given unyielding and uncompromising underlying attitudes, why bother with institutional selection at all? While the high costs of cooperation breed uncompromising 

attitudes, political leaders realize that the costs of suppression might be even dearer. 

It is therefore reasonable for political elites in high-stakes environments to attempt 

to secure an institutional advantage, which would be less costly than direct confrontation. To do so, these leaders “hedge,” or they do not fully commit to the procedural 

regulation and adjudication of conflict. Rather, they retain access to extraconstitutional mechanisms for exercising autonomy, subverting the democratic process, and 

securing their core interests.32

One method of hedging that Iraqi political parties exercised abundantly was to commandeer key ministries and staff them exclusively with dedicated followers who would 

reliably work on behalf of their interests in utter disregard of institutionally mediated 

outcomes. Shiite political figures turned, among others, the Ministry of the Interior 

The drafting of a constitution 

and the selection of electoral 

institutions have not been 

mechanisms for conflict resolution 

and accommodation. The deep 

and bitter divisions within Iraqi 

society and polity have driven the 

process of institutional selection. 

That institutional engineering 

has failed simply reflects these 

underlying conflicts.


and the Ministry of Health into party appendages. Iraqi parties practice patrimonial 

politics at the provincial and local levels as well, so that tight links of patronage tie 

party leaders to agents on the ground in bureaucratic offices, municipal councils, the 

judiciary, and the police force.33 Another method of circumventing constitutional governance is to create “facts on the ground” that the constitution must accommodate. 

Thus, Kurdish political parties have used their considerable resources to extend control 

over disputed territories, most important the city of Kirkuk, and they have demanded 

that constitutional amendments recognize their territorial ambitions.

The most significant form of hedging, however, has been to retain paramilitary forces 

under party control, and this accounts for the simultaneous occurrence of institutional 

engineering and descent into civil war. It is not the case that Iraq has been divided 

between advocates of peace and advocates of violence. The issues that motivated the 

civil war are precisely those that political leaders refused to resolve through compromise. Moreover, very close ties exist between leaders of political parties and the militias 

that fought the civil war. Muqtada al-Sadr, whose followers in the Sadrist Movement 

won 29 of the 128 seats by the United Iraqi Alliance in the 2005 parliamentary elections, led the Mahdi Army, the key organization that instigated violence against Sunni 

Arabs in Baghdad and other ethnically mixed towns. The Badr Organization, which the 

Iranian Revolutionary Guards established, equipped, and trained, is the armed wing of 

the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, whose leader, Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, is often viewed 

as a “moderate politician.” Both Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the 

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have their own armed groups, or peshmerga. Peshmerga

forces have been loosely integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces—their disposition is 

completely under the control of Kurdish leaders—from where they have been effective 

agents of anti-insurgency but consequently keen contributors to sectarian polarization. 

While the highly decentralized Sunni-Arab insurgency has not generated an overarching 

leadership, one of the two main Sunni-Arab parties at the height of the civil war, the 

Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, maintained close ties to insurgent groups. Civil war 

and insurgency accompanied constitution making precisely because war was the extension of politics by other means.

3FDFOU4VDDFTT
'VUVSF4UBCJMJUZ%PFT*OTUJUVUJPOBM&OHJOFFSJOH

1SPWJEFUIF'PVOEBUJPO 

On January 31, 2009, Iraqis returned to the ballot box to elect provincial council 

members. Election day was calm with relatively high turnout, almost no violence, and 

limited voting fraud—results that encouraged many observers. Sunni Arabs increased 

their representation, which had been artificially depressed due to their boycott of the 

2005 provincial elections. The significant gains of Prime Minister Maliki’s electoral coalition seem to signal an endorsement of a secular and nationalist position and a rejection 

of Shiite provincialism. Combined with the dramatic reduction in violence that began 

in summer 2007, commentators speculated that Iraqi politics had entered a new era of 

normalcy in which parliamentary debate would supplant street battles. 

However, it is important not to overstate the consequences of these elections. 

Provincial elections were held in only fourteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces. The Kurdish Regional Government decided not to hold a vote in the three provinces under its 

control. Elections were also not held in Tamim Province, home to the divided and oilrich city of Kirkuk, control over which remains a major source of tension and potential 

conflict. While Iraqi Arabs and Kurds may one day peacefully negotiate a resolution 

to their many conflicts, neither side appears willing to compromise, and the threat of 

military engagement remains very real.34

The most significant form of 

hedging has been to retain 

paramilitary forces under party 

control, and this accounts for 

the simultaneous occurrence of 

institutional engineering and 

descent into civil war.


In addition, recent signs of progress, while very welcome, cannot be attributed to 

institutional engineering. The evident decline in violence, including attacks on U.S. 

forces and the government and intersectarian fighting, results from a host of unrelated 

factors. The December 2007 Department of Defense Report to Congress on Security and 

Stability in Iraq stated, 

The Sunni-Arab alliance with the United States and, more indirectly, with the Maliki 

government, is clearly a marriage of convenience based on shifting incentives. Sunni 

tribes in al-Anbar Province shifted their loyalties in response to efforts by al-Qaeda in 

Iraq to monopolize the insurgency and impose its authority over the tribes and their 

lucrative economic activities.36 As the alliance with U.S. forces benefited tribal leaders, other Sunni-Arab forces replicated it in Tikrit, Diyala, and elsewhere. In Baghdad 

itself, Sunni Arabs, increasingly squeezed between encroaching Shiite militias that 

pushed Sunnis out of mixed neighborhoods, on one side, and the growing threat of 

al-Qaeda domination, on the other side, likewise decided to forge an alliance with 

American forces. The gradual cessation of Sunni militancy then gave the Maliki government the space needed to launch an offensive in Basra and thus impose authority over 

rival Shiite militias, especially the Jaysh al-Mahdi. 

Civil wars and other violent conflicts produce shifting alliances. In that sense, the 

political changes in Iraq of the last eighteen months are not totally unexpected. It is 

far too soon to say with any certainty what the outcome will be. One possibility is that 

the alliances that have brought some security and stability to Iraq will not be sustainable, and Iraq will return to political fragmentation and violence.37

Another possibility is that temporary alliances will become consolidated, and Iraq 

will evolve into a constitutional political order. The eventual outcome, however, is not 

being determined by institutional engineering, but rather by the interplay of preferences, capabilities, and strategies. One can hope that the outcome will be a constitutional order, but that order will be the effect of political and military dynamics, not 

their cause.

$PODMVTJPO%P*OTUJUVUJPOT.BUUFS 

This report raises two types of challenges to those who believe that institutional 

engineering is the source of democratic stability in post-conflict societies. The first, 

more significant, challenge is methodological. Far too many discussions of the promise 

of institutional engineering are based on methodologically suspect evidence that is 

collected nonsystematically and analyzed poorly, without correcting for the inherent 

weaknesses of observational data.

The second challenge this report poses is empirical. It uses a qualitative method 

called process tracing to better understand institutional engineering in Iraq. Rather 

than criticizing the process by which the constitution was drafted and the provision it 

contained, it analyzes the sources of that process and the arrangements that ensued. 

The report thus suggests that the evident failures of constitution making in Iraq were 

not the results of poor management, bad judgment, or any other error that could have 

been corrected. Rather, it suggests that institutional engineering in Iraq largely followed a script written by key actors who preferred partisanship to compromise, and 

The overall reduction in security incidents can be attributed to several factors, 

including the continued decrease in capabilities of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and 

militia extremists, increased tribal initiatives against AQI and other extremists, 

Muqtada al-Sadr’s ceasefire order to his Jaysh al-Mahdi militia, the increased 

capability of the Iraqi military and police, the separation of previously mixed 

sectarian communities into homogeneous neighborhoods, and the sustained 

presence of Coalition and Iraqi forces among the population.35


who never intended to be bound by any constitutional provision that was not entirely 

consonant with their parochial interests. Simply put, it was the existing structure of 

conflicts that motivated behavior and determined outcomes. 

This special report thus raises the possibility that institutions alone do not have 

the stabilizing powers attributed to them. This conclusion does not necessarily condemn societies like Iraq to discord and dictatorship. Rather, it points us in a different 

analytical direction, away from institutional design and toward the resolution of the 

underlying conflicts.
17

/PUFT

1. Chappell Lawson, “How Best to Build Democracy: Laying a Foundation for the New Iraq,” Foreign 

Affairs 82 (July/August 2003), 207.

2. United States Institute of Peace, “Iraq’s Constitutional Process: Shaping a Vision for the 

Country’s Future,” Special Report No. 132 (February 2005), 1-2.

3. Alan S. Gerber, Donald P. Green, and Edward H. Kaplan, “The Illusion of Learning from Observational 

Research,” in Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith, and Tarek E. Masoud, eds., Problems and Methods in the 

Study of Politics, (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 251-73.

4. An influential statement of the alternative hypothesis is Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the 

Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America, (Cambridge, U.K.: 

Cambridge University Press, 1991), 51-56.

5. For a summary statement, see Arend Lijphart, “Constitutional Design for Divided Societies,” 

Journal of Democracy 15 (April 2004), 96-109.

6.. Brian Barry pioneered this critique more than thirty years ago, and defenders of the conventional 

wisdom have never offered a convincing rebuttal. See his “The Consociational Model and Its 

Dangers,” European Journal of Political Research 3 (December 1975), 393-412. 

7. Donald L. Horowitz, “Democracy in Divided Societies,” Journal of Democracy 4 (October 1993), 36.

8. The claim that broader sociocultural conditions can undermine institutional rules was most 

famously made by Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University 

Press, 1994).

9. This section relies heavily on the discussion in David Freedman, Robert Pisani, and Roger Purves, 

Statistics, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), Chapters 1 and 2. 

10. Far more feasible would be an experiment that randomly assigned institutions to different regions 

within a democracy. That experiment might demonstrate some causal effects of institutions. 

But because the experiment occurred within a democracy, inter-regional differences would have 

limited relevance for the stability of democracy at the national level.

11. For details, see Christopher H. Achen, The Statistical Analysis of Quasi-Experiments, (Berkeley, 

Calif.: University of California Press, 1986). 

12. William R. Shadish, Thomas D. Cook, and Donald T. Campbell, Experimental and Quasi-Experimental 

Designs for Generalized Causal Inference, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 120-22.

13. Jose Antonio Cheibub, Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy (Cambridge, U.K.: 

Cambridge University Press, 2007), 136.

14. Erik Wibbels, “Madison in Baghdad? Decentralization and Federalism in Comparative Politics,” 

Annual Review of Political Science (2006), 178.

15. These include Adeed I. Dawisha and Karen Dawisha, “How to Build a Democratic Iraq,” Foreign 

Affairs 86 (May/June 2003), 36-50; Chappell Lawson, “How Best to Build Democracy: Laying a 

Foundation for the New Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 86 (July/August 2003), 206-09; Daniel L. Byman 

and Kenneth M. Pollack, “Democracy in Iraq,” The Washington Quarterly 26 (Summer 2003), 

119-36; Daniel L. Byman, “Constructing a Democratic Iraq: Challenges and Opportunities,” 

International Security 28 (Summer 2003), 47-78; Dawn Brancati, “Can Federalism Stabilize Iraq?” 

The Washington Quarterly 27 (Spring 2004), 7-21; Arend Lijphart, “Constitutional Design for 

Divided Societies,” Journal of Democracy 15 (April 2004), 96-109; and Larry Diamond, Squandered 

Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York: 

Times Books, 2005).

16. Brancati, “Can Federalism Stabilize Iraq?,” 15. 

17. Dawisha and Dawisha, “How to Build a Democratic Iraq,” 39.

18. Lijphart, “Constitutional Design for Divided Societies,” 97-99.

19. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 317. 

20. Nathan J. Brown, “Reason, Interest, Rationality, and Passion in Constitution Drafting,” 

Perspectives on Politics 6 (December 2008), 675. 

21. Adeed Dawisha, “The New Iraq: Democratic Institutions and Performance,” Journal of Democracy

16 (July 2005), 40.

22. International Crisis Group, “Unmaking Iraq: A Constitutional Process Gone Awry,” Middle East 

Briefing No. 19 (September 26, 2005), 1. 

23. Jonathan Morrow, “Iraq’s Constitutional Process II: An Opportunity Lost,” United States Institute 

of Peace, Special Report No. 155 (November 2005). 
18

24. Good discussions of process tracing can be found in Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, 

Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005); 

and John Gerring, Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge 

University Press, 2007). 

25. Nathan J. Brown, “Is Political Consensus Possible in Iraq?,” Carnegie Endowment for International 

Peace, Policy Outlook (November 2005), 1-2.

26. Michael Ross, “Blood Barrels: Why Oil Wealth Fuels Conflict,” Foreign Affairs 87 (May/June 2008), 4.

27. See Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (New Haven, Conn.: 

Yale University Press, 2007), 62-76. 

28. See Anthony H. Cordesman, “The True Meaning of the Iraqi Election: A ‘Trigger,’ Not a Turning 

Point,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Working Paper, (December 15, 2005).

29. Government Accounting Office, “Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and 

Economic Benchmarks,” (September 4, 2007); Damien Cave, “Iraq Parliament Finds a Quorum 

Hard to Come By,” New York Times, January 24, 2007.

30. Brian Katulis, March Lynch, and Peter Juul, “Iraq’s Political Transition after the Surge: Five 

Enduring Tensions and Ten Key Challenges,” Center for American Progress (September 2008), 

20-21.

31. Ibid., 22.

32. On hedging and democratic stability, see Gerard Alexander, The Sources of Democratic Consolidation, 

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002).

33. For a local-level view of this process, see Mark Etherington, Revolt on the Nile: The al-Sadr Uprising 

and the Governing of Iraq (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005), 78-86. 

34. Leila Fadel, “Iraq’s Kurdish-Arab Tensions Threaten to Escalate into War,” McClatchy Newspapers, 

February 18, 2009.

35. Department of Defense, “Report to Congress: Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” (December 

2007), iii-iv.

36. International Crisis Group, “Iraq after the Surge, I: The New Sunni Landscape,” Middle East Report 

74 (April 30, 2008); and John A. McGary, “The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives,” The 

Washington Quarterly (January 2009), 43-59. 

37. Steven Simon, “The Price of the Surge,” Foreign Affairs 87 (May/June 2008), 57-76.

6OJUFE4UBUFT

*OTUJUVUFPG1FBDF

1200 17th Street NW

Washington, DC 20036

XXXVTJQPSH

An online edition of this and related 

reports can be found on our Web site 

(www.usip.org), together with additional 

information on the subject.

0G3FMBUFE*OUFSFTU

t Land, Property, and the Challenge of Return for Iraq’s Displaced by Deborah Isser and 

Peter Van der Auweraert (Special Report, April 2009)

t Iraq, its Neighbors, and the Obama Administration: Syrian and Saudi Perspectives by 

the Iraq and its Neighbors initiative (Working Paper, February 2009)

t The Treasury Approach to State-Building and Institution-Strengthening Assistance: 

Experience in Iraq and Broader Implications by Jeremiah S. Pam (Special Report, 

October 2008)

t Reconciliation Strategies in Iraq by David A. Steele (Special Report, October 2008)

t Political Progress in Iraq during the Surge by Rend Al-Rahim Francke (Special Report. 

August 2007) 

t Iraq’s New Political Map by Phebe Marr (Special Report, January 2007)