Obstacles to the Process of State-building in Iraq

After the fall of Saddam, active participation of the Shiites and Kurds along with the minimal and passive participation of the Sunnis led to the formation of a new structure based on democratic principles. At a time when it was thought that Iraq will find peace by eliminating one of the biggest dictators of history, the country experienced political and security crises emerging one after another. It disrupted democratic process of state-building and dragged Iraqi government into the abyss of despair. Using exploratory method, library tools and interviews, the paper is to answer the question "what are the obstacles to the process of state-building in Iraq?" In order to answer the question, it was hypothesized that “social gaps activated by ethno-sectarian distribution of the population in Iraq and the lack of infrastructure required for democratization, as well as the tribal and nomadic structure of the country, obstructed state-building process in Iraq”. Besides confirming the hypothesis, the results showed that consensus democracy as a dominated pattern of political system, not only exacerbated social gaps but also led to the ineffectiveness of the political system of Iraq and it is one of the barriers to state-building in the country.