Rebuilding Economics and the Stabilization of Iraq: Introduction

by Alfio Cerami

REV: 12/12/2017

1. This blog project sets the framework for a new approach to economic development and reconstruction -rebuilding economics -, taking as a case study Iraq. It calls attention to the necessity of establishing synergies between economics, political science, sociology and cultural anthropology.  Close to security objectives, it emphasized the need,  of focusing on three main areas of  global development: (1) economics of change; (2) human security; and (3) democratization.

   This set of blogs sheds light on the vulnerabilities of an oil-led political economy of development. It highlights the importance of cultural repertoires in public policy making. Tribes in Iraq are addressed as crucial elements in the establishment of a new form of ‘culturally sensitive capitalism’.  In this process of nation-state formation, social, economic, political, cultural and security arrangements play an important developmental and democratizing role.

   Ensuring security whilst rescaling policy making through the creation of new multilevel governance steering mechanisms and procedures become, in this case, a necessity. However, as discussed by Haggard and Long (2007) and Haggard and Kaufman (2008), attention is also paid to pre-existing institutional legacies, self-reinforcing and path-dependent mechanisms, as well as constitutional and electoral engineering processes with the associated emerging political realignments and distributive conflicts (Haggard and Kaufman 2016). These remain important elements of system transformation (Kollmorgen et al. 2015).

   This set of blogs is structured as follows:

   1. Rebuilding Economics and the Stabilization of Iraq: Introduction

   2. Rebuilding Economics

   3. Political Changes in Iraq

   4. Economic Changes in Iraq

   5. Social Change in Iraq

   6. Cultural Changes in Iraq

   7. Financing the Reconstruction in Iraq

   8. The Social Security System in Iraq

   9. Challenges Ahead and De-Radicalization in Iraq

   10. List of References

Please see also:

• Cerami, Alfio (2019), Complexity Theory, Democratic Transition and Public Policy Choices in Iraq, MPRA Paper No. 92382, University Library of Munich, Germany. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/92382/1/MPRA_paper_92382.pdf
• Cerami, Alfio (2018), The Lights of Iraq: Electricity Usage and the Iraqi War-fare Regime, MPRA Paper No. 88264, University Library of Munich, Germany. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/88264/1/MPRA_paper_88264.pdf