Class columns, chapter news, updates, weddings, babies and more

John Kincaid is the Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service and director of the College’s Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government. He was president of the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies from 1998 to 2005 and currently is senior editor of the Global Dialogue on Federalism, a joint project of IACFS and the Forum of Federations.

Kincaid has lectured and consulted on issues of federalism, intergovernmental relations, state and local government, and decentralization throughout the United States and in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, India, Iraq, Japan, Maldives, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

Kincaid teaches Lafayette courses on state and local government and politics, U.S. politics and government, and U.S. federalism. He joined the faculty in 1994 after serving as executive director of the bipartisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in Washington, D.C., and as an associate professor at the University of North Texas.

From 1981 to 2006, Kincaid was editor of Publius: The Journal of Federalism. An elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, he is the recipient of the Daniel J. Elazar Distinguished Scholar Award from the Section on Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations of the American Political Science Association and of the Donald Stone Distinguished Scholar Award from the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society of Public Administration.

HISTORY & HOPE IN IRAQ

Federalism faces an uncertain future.

by John Kincaid | Illustration by Terry Stout

“How can you teach under such dangerous conditions?” I asked a senior political scientist from the University of Baghdad. “It’s my job,” he replied with a puzzled look, “and I like teaching political philosophy. Most important, I have hope for my country. Without hope, I could not go forward.”

“Are you able to meet your classes regularly, and do students attend classes regularly?” I inquired. “Yes, usually,” he responded. “Things are better now, and students want to finish their education.”

I couldn’t help but ask if he believed the United States had been wrong to invade Iraq. He evaded the question. “It is good that Saddam is gone, but you Americans have made a mess of things in my country. We Iraqis have made a further mess by fighting among ourselves. Now we must rebuild our country.”

The dominant images we have of Iraq are death and destruction, fear and terror. Suicide bombers stroll into crowds of shoppers, trains of religious pilgrims, and lines of police recruits where they detonate themselves for a holy reward. Trucks and cars loaded with explosives blow up marketplaces, mosques, and other places filled with children, women, and men.

These are the newsworthy images of Iraq. If it bleeds, it leads. But these images mislead because they belie the daily courage of the average Iraqi’s pursuit of normalcy. This is the most striking thing I have learned while working with Iraqi academics and public officials. Most of them live under extreme duress; yet they persevere in teaching their classes and performing their public duties.

Federalism’s uncertain future

Iraq, a country somewhat larger than California geographically but smaller in population (29 million vs. 38 million), has a federal constitution that faces a very uncertain future. I traveled there last November to serve as an adviser and as a representative of the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies (IACFS) at a four-day conference of 41 Iraqi academics and 23 government officials convened to establish an Iraq Center for Federal Studies. A major reason for establishing the center is to build an Iraqi academic capacity to conduct research, educate students, and train government officials in matters of federal, democratic governance.

The conference was held in Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Hosting the conference was very important to the KRG because the Kurds are the strongest advocates of Iraqi federalism. Most Shiites, who make up more than 60 percent of Iraq’s population, are not enthusiastic about federalism because it will frustrate their ability to assert their majority will nationwide. The Sunni Arabs are ambivalent. Previously dominant, they do not want to be squeezed into political impotence by their Kurdish and Shiite neighbors.

Erbil, which is about 225 miles north of Baghdad and 50 miles southeast of Mosul, is a rather secure city accessible to most Iraqis, and the conference was held in a hotel surrounded by blast walls and staffed with ample security. The conference was sponsored by the Forum of Federations, an international organization of nine federal countries, based in Ottawa, with which the Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government has had a long relationship. The event was funded primarily by the Canadian International Development Agency.

The academics—mostly political scientists and law professors—came from 19 universities across Iraq. The public officials came from the national Prime Minister’s Office, Council of Ministers’ Secretariat, High Judicial Council, and Ministry of Higher Education, as well as the Kurdish Ministry of Higher Education and four governorate councils. (A governorate, muhafazah in Arabic, is a regional administrative unit common in the Middle East and similar to a province. It is governed locally by a council, and consists of districts, sub-districts, and villages.) Canada’s ambassador to Iraq addressed the conference, and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, U.S. Institute of Peace, and U.S. National Democratic Institute each sent a representative. The opening day of the conference was covered by six local and national Iraqi media outlets, and KurdSat TV broadcast the opening to all of Iraq, neighboring countries, and the Kurdish diaspora in Europe.

My role, and that of David Cameron, a political scientist from the University of Toronto, was to help co-chair sessions of the conference and provide advice during deliberations by the Iraqi participants, while Mark Lemieux, a Forum of Federations staff member, handled logistics. Fortunately, simultaneous translation services were available to facilitate interaction.

I made one formal presentation, a PowerPoint overview of the IACFS that had been translated into Arabic for screen projection. Apparently the translations were good because the participants asked many questions. If the Iraq Center for Federal Studies becomes operational, it will petition for membership in the IACFS.

The conference achieved its objectives. These were:

Little understanding, many challenges

The conference deliberations, however, often reflected Iraq’s Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish regional divisions. Politically, the academics could not escape their cultural ties. This was evident when we discussed creation of an executive committee. It was clear that all three regions would have to be represented equally, though a half-hour debate ensued on how to delimit the regions for this purpose. I then suggested a seven-member committee with two members from each region and one neutral person. “Not possible” was the response. “Are there no citizens of Iraq?” I asked. There was no audible response, only a motion to create a nine-member committee. The participants then recessed into three regional caucuses, and each selected three members of the executive committee. That outcome was more confederal than federal, however, because it grounded power entirely in the regions.

Making the center operational will be challenging, too. There is little understanding in Iraq of federalism as a system of democratic self-rule and shared rule, and there is weak support for federalism among Shiite and Sunni leaders. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, has been trying to dissuade governorates and provinces from forming regions, which would politically federalize the country and limit Baghdad’s power. Even the KRG is jeopardizing the federal arrangement by receiving arms from abroad in apparent contravention of the Iraq Constitution and by saying that it will invite permanent U.S. military bases into Kurdistan even if Iraq’s federal government rejects such bases.

Also, in some quarters, federalism is seen as an “imperialistic,” American imposition. At many universities, teaching explicitly about federalism is discouraged. At a few universities, offering a course on federalism would be dangerous. “If I teach about federalism,” said one professor, “I must call it something else, like public administration.” Several participants said that they did not tell anyone, even their university administrators, that the conference in Erbil was about federalism. They were dismayed by the media coverage and tried to stay out of camera view.

Indeed, most of the participants with whom I could speak privately said that they and their colleagues had received threats in recent years. All knew of relatives, colleagues, friends, or neighbors who had been killed by militias or terrorists. Terrorists also try to intimidate government officials, professors, and others by threatening or attacking their family members.

A leading example is the chief justice of the Iraq Supreme Court, Medhat al-Mahoud, whom I met at a seminar on Iraqi judicial independence in Istanbul in September 2006. His son had been kidnapped from the University of Baghdad and murdered in May 2006. Yet Mahoud perseveres, like most of the academics and public officials at the conference.

As a result, though, several conference participants said that they had sent their families abroad—to Egypt, Jordan, or Syria, for example. Many have or seek dual citizenship as well. The vice president of Koya University, who hosted Professor Cameron, Mark Lemieux, and me at his home, is also a citizen of Sweden, as are his wife and three young children. His two school-age children attend an English-language school in Erbil. (They spoke superb English. We looked at his son’s fifth-grade math and biology textbooks. They are much more advanced than books one finds in most U.S. fifth-grade classrooms.)

The long view: history and hope

At the same time, the participants from across Iraq spoke of many marriages, friendships, collegial relations, and neighborliness among Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. A Sunni official said that his home was in a Shiite neighborhood. “Last year, my neighbors told me that my family and I were being targeted for death by Shiite militia elements,” he said. “We moved out, but my neighbors are watching our house for us and occupying it so the militia does not take it or burn it down.” “Do you want to live there again?” I asked. “I hope so,” he responded. A Shiite participant related a similar story about his Sunni neighbors.

Whether Iraqis can build a viable federal democracy remains to be seen, but I hope to contribute to that effort again. (I have worked on and off with Iraqis on federalism matters since 1995, when I first participated in a conference with Iraqi exiles in London.) Such experiences are a vital part of my academic work. It is important to practice what I teach and, in turn, incorporate practice into what I teach. I hope that my students benefit, as well, and realize that while the Ivory Tower is an important place for learning and reflection, it also has moral obligations to the world.

Teaching at Lafayette with so many young people of diverse heritages is a daily affirmation of life, not death. So, I cannot imagine teaching under the conditions endured by so many of the conference participants. Still, the long view of history and hope I found in Iraq was brought home by an assistant professor of law who approached me in halting English on the conference’s third day.

“Hello, I am from Babylon University,” he said. I was astonished. Babylon? Didn’t that disappear 2,000 years ago? He gave me two tiles (made for tourists), one bearing a relief of an ancient lyre, the other showing a relief of a lamassu, a winged lion with a human head from Nimrud Palace of about 865 B.C.E.

“I hope you can come to Babylon and lecture for my students,” he said. “We wish to build a strong school for the future of Iraq.”