FRAGMENTED PATRIMONY AND THE SECTARIAN STATE: EXPLAINING IRAQ’S EXTERNAL RELATIONS 2003-2014

Abstract

ABSTRACT
This thesis sets out to explore the increasing role that sectarian identity has played in the conduct of Iraq’s external relations between 2003 and 2014. While the study of Iraqi foreign policy has long informed our understanding of Middle East politics and regional rivalries, this has either been framed by reference to variants of realism or by emphasising the autocratic nature of the state and the central control exercised by the regime of Saddam Hussein. By contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to how forms of neo-patrimony have not only informed the dispensation of power internally within Iraq, but equally, how differing sectarian identities have impacted upon Iraq’s external relations.
It is the link therefore between neo-patrimony and sectarian identity in explaining Iraq’s external relations that this thesis examines. It frames this approach by drawing on the constructivist literature, which eschews the positivist approach associated with realism in explaining the nature of Iraq’s external relations. As this thesis argues, the nature of state interests has rarely been static: state elites, even in an autocracy such as Iraq’s, have to be sensitive to how such identities have shaped its external engagement. This has shaped Iraqi external relations in the past and remained a constant in explaining Iraqi foreign policy between 2003 and 2014. However, as the thesis demonstrates through extensive fieldwork, these sectarian identities became more pronounced. Freed from the control of an autocratic regime, neo-patrimonial politics increasingly determined how sectarian interests were both met and manipulated by a new political dispensation. As such, the collective idea of the ‘national interest’ was increasingly contested as the fault lines of identity questioned the very idea of a coherent Iraqi national interest in determining its foreign policy and external relations.