This essay analyzes the results of a survey of Iraqi citizens’ attitudes toward governance and democracy. The survey, conducted in November and December 2004, gives particular attention to attitudes toward democracy, attitudes about the political role of religion, the relationship between political attitudes and views about the rights and status of women, and the degree to which political attitudes differ among Iraq’s ethnoreligious communities and are influenced by sectarianism. Findings reveal broad support for democracy, although there is substantial disagreement about the role that Islam should play in political affairs. This disagreement overlaps with and reinforces intercommunal differences.
About the Authors
Mark Tessler
Mark Tessler is Samuel J. Eldersveld Collegiate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Arab Barometer Survey.
Ronald F. Inglehart, Amy and Alan Lowenstein Professor of Democracy, Democratization, and Human Rights at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and codirector of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia, directs the World Values Survey, which has surveyed representative national samples of the publics of 97 countries.
Mansoor Moaddel is professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. His most recent book is Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism: Episode and Discourse (2005).
If Iraq is successfully to democratize and an inclusive democratic culture is to emerge, the Iraqi state must be reconstituted as a federal and strongly liberal system and thoroughly demilitarized.
If Iraq is to become the free and self-governing country that an overwhelming majority of its citizens want it to be, a "useable past" made accessible by historical memory will…
