ABSTRACT
As other contributors to this volume demonstrate, the post-war political situation in Iraq is complex, confusing and uncertain.1 It is impossible to predict with any confidence how events will unfold, or what will be their long-term consequences. Clearly though, the major immediate problem facing both the Iraqis and the occupying powers is the need to establish some kind of political ‘normality’; and questions about how to think about what we call ‘political reconstruction’ lie at the heart of our concerns. We do not, however, directly address the concrete, empirical analysis of any specific institutional proposals. Rather, we seek to explore the relevance to problems of political reconstruction in Iraq of a certain kind of normative political theory. In particular, we examine the work of three contemporary liberal political theorists concerned to articulate the principles of a just political order. These principles, which are of a generally liberal democratic hue, are conceived of as a guide to political practice, in the sense that they set out broad goals for, and constraints on, what counts as a morally legitimate political structure. In undertaking this exercise we aim to draw attention to what we see as the severe limits of normative liberal political theory in contexts such as those of the post-war reconstruction of Iraq. While we raise difficulties that are specific to each of the theorists whose work we discuss, our principal purpose is to explain how the limitations of liberal theory are to be found in certain generic features of this style of normative political theorizing.
