The nature of the political system in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Date01 September 2020
DOI10.1177/2057891119844599
Published date01 September 2020
Subject MatterResearch articles
Research article
The nature of the political
system in the Kurdistan
Region of Iraq
Farhad Hassan Abdullah
University of Sulaimani, Iraq
Hawre Hasan Hama
Ishik University, Iraq
Abstract
The Kurdistan region of Iraq has a substantial number of the customary signs of political system,
including the various main branches of the state institutions such as executive, courts, and
assembly. Since 1991, the Region has established as certain political system that adheres to a
commonly acknowledged type of system of government. Some contend that the political system in
the region is a presidential system, however with parliament having had the ability to vote the
President in or out for quite a while. Political division, explicitly between the political parties, has
ended up being a veritable obstruction to the political advancement and strength of the Region and
to concocting a bound together type of political system. The region has suffered from lack of
constitution; this has caused political conflicts over the law of the presidency of the region and the
ways of electing the President. Therefore, when Barzani’s presidency term ended in August 2015,
the political parties except the KDP attempted to amend the presidential law and make another
law to elect the president inside the parliament until writing the constitution for the Region in
which the political parties can agree on the form of the political system and the way of electing the
President. This article contends that there is a connection between the nature and structure of the
political parties and the political systems that have been proposed as a ruling model for the region.
The article also concludes by identifying potential systems of government available to the KRI and
the potential consequences of each.
Keywords
Kurdistan region, parliament, political parties, political system, president
Corresponding author:
Farhad Hassan Abdullah, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sulaimani, Sulaimani 49000, Iraq.
Email: farhad.abdul@univsul.edu.iq
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2020, Vol. 5(3) 300–315
ªThe Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/2057891119844599
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Introduction
While the Kurds’ common ethnic identity unites them, as a people, they are as divided as any other
ethnic group—by dialect, political id eology, and the personalities and strate gic priorities of their
leaders. (Hiltermann, 2017)
Iraqi Kurdistan’s experience as a quasi-independent region has been one of profound failure
to establish a unified, stable political system. Over the past two and a half decades, the
Region has been ruled by two political parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and
the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Since the mid-1970s, they have been engaged in a
bitter and sometimes violent rivalry. After the Region achieved a degree of autonomy in the
early 1990s, they maintained largely separate administrat ions designed to serve the interests
of the party, with the KDP controlling the Erbil and Dohuk governorates and the PUK
governing Sulaymaniyah. After the 2009 general election, other actors arrived on the political
landscape, primarily in the form of the Change Movement (Gorran). In subsequent years, the
number of parties further expanded to include the Coalition for Democracy and Justice, New
Generation, and several Islamic parties.
The system crisis in the Kurdistan Region is restricted to whether the form of the political
system in the Region should be a parliamentary or presidential system. Indeed, this crisis directly
reflects the political interests of the dominant political parties in the Region: the PUK favors the
former and the KDP wants to establish the latter. In fact, each harbors ambitions of imposing their
chosen political system on the Region as a whole. In other words, the nature, structure, and
leadership priorities of the PUK and the KDP are the driving force behind the proposed solutions
meant to address political instability in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).
This article will apply the “systems approach” to the study of the political system in the KRI to
explain system and sub-system relationships. It also discusses the background dynamics of the
political rivalry in the Region, the motivations of each party in embracing one system of govern-
ment over the other, and how the problem of insta bility may be solved. Additionally, it wi ll
examine the consequences of continuing the current system.
Systems approach
The German biologist Ludwig Van Bertalanfly was the first to theorize a general systems approach
in the 1930s. His approach was then adapted for use in political science, especially comparative
politics, by scholars like Kaplan, Easton, Almond, Apter, and Deutsch. They see a system as a set
of interactions, interrelations, and patterned behaviors among individuals and institutions, each
performing a particular function (Sadanandan et al., 2003).
System analysis argues that persisting relationships and behavioral patterns exist between the
objects or entities within a system. A system that constitutes an element of a larger system is
called a sub-system (Almond, 1956). The institutions and organizations are at the same time
elements of both the main system and one or more subsets. Analysis of subsystems must consist
of an examination of the relation between the system and the subsystem, as well as the dynamic
within the subsystem itself. According to Almond (1956), a system implies the interdependence
of parts, meaning that a change in one subset of interactions produces changes in all the other
subsets.
Abdullah and Hama 301

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