With the New York Times reporting today that around 25 percent of middle class Iraqis have been issued passports, what does this have in store for a future Iraqi democracy?
As we have learned with Iraq, the simple act of placing a ballot in a box does not a democracy make. Democracy requires a civil society in order to function in a way that is representative and inclusive. According to the
New York Times:
In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class.
This is very bad news for anyone with hope's of a burdgeoning Iraqi democracy. As Hegel said, "If the state is represented as a unity of different persons, as a unity which is only a partnership, then what is really meant is only civil society." Or if flipped around, a state that wishes to govern based on unity and consensus requires civil society. And civil society requires the involvement and presence of a middle class.
To unpack this last sentence: civil society is generally seen as activity which resides outside the government that builds political or social capital. A World Bank article defines civil society as:
Broadly speaking it includes academics, the media, parliamentarians, community groups, professional associations, political parties, religious organizations, rotating credit groups, and labor unions, as well as many more formal and informal associations too numerous to list.
Civil society organizations (CSOs) require the participation of the people in order to build structures independent of the government. Furthermore, financial capital is also very helpful to get these organizations off the ground and running. This is where the middle class come in. This group generally has a greater ability to finance and participate in CSOs than do the poor. And historically the affluent tend to utilize this ability moreso than the poor.
Why that is would make an excellent diary of its own, so let's cut to the chase: Iraq absolutely needs a affluent middle class base in order to build these CSOs and in turn develop a functioning democracy. The fact that 25% of affluent Iraqis have received passports and are leaving the country does not bode well for Iraq's future. One could make an analogy to macroeconomics. When an economist attempts to predict the future direction of an economy, he often looks to underlying indicators such as aggregate wholesale costs, for example. And if a political scientist sought to prognosticate on the future of a nascent democracy, looking at the behavior of the middle classes would be one underlying factor he or she would pay attention to. In Iraq's case, these factors are not encouraging.