Challenges to Democratization in Post-Saddam Iraq from the Perspective of Constructivist Theory

This research seeks to examine challenges to democratization in Iraq from the perspective of constructivist theory of international relations. Iraqi political currents and parties have failed to form a consistent political structure in the country through the democratic functions after U.S. invasion in such a way that after the 2010 parliamentary elections, it took nine months for the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to form his second government. In this period, the political parties and currents were engaged in bargaining and insistence on gaining their shares. In this paper, the author argues that inconsistency in the sociopolitical fabric and structure, despotic and absolute culture governing the currents and disruption in the proper trend of nation-state-building have been the serious challenges to democratization in the country. Adopting and applying the constructivist theory and explaining its three parameters (social structure, identity of actors as well as the nature of structureagency), the author concludes that Iraq’s uneven social structure encourages competitive behavior by the actors including the domestic and foreign ones and on the other hand this competitive behavior has resulted in the formation of a structure based on recognizing this incongruity.