ABSTRACT
The attempt to introduce federalism in Iraq to peacefully deal with internal diversity and to stabilise the country has largely failed. The constitution of 2005, which directly resulted from the intervention of the USA and their allies, was unsuccessful in transforming the authoritarian centralised state in a federation uniting the different components of the country while respecting their diversity. The constitution and its patchy implementation are instead associated with a quasi-independent Iraqi region of Kurdistan having a charged relationship with Baghdad, and an elected government for a highly dysfunctional rest-Iraq. This paper aims to demonstrate that it was not federalism, which has failed in Iraq, but conflict resolution and state transformation in a much broader sense. The fact that the constitution-making process was severely flawed had an independent outcome on the constitution itself: The constitutional provisions did not entrench a hard-earned agreement on how to divide powers and resources between Baghdad and the regions and on how to share power at the centre, but employed federal terminology in the absence of such a consensus. The paper argues that the constitutional regime introduced in 2005 is not federal but lacks subnational units, a clear division of powers and resources, an appropriate participation of the units at the centre as well as a neutral arbiter. It concludes that federalism has not failed in Iraq, but has not yet been tried.
