Read all about it : the free press, the public sphere and democracy in Iraq

Despite a wealth of recent research which has detailed the impact that new media outlets and technologies have had on the Middle East&rsquo;s nascent public sphere and its role in promoting democracy, there has been little investigation into the re-emergence of the free press in Iraq following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the corresponding end to his tight control over the nation&rsquo;s media sector. This paper begins by reviewing Iraq&rsquo;s long relationship with the written word and its corresponding public sphere. It traces the introduction of the printing press to Iraq by the Ottomans and details those periods when the Iraqi press was truly free, fostering the emergence of a civil society and democratic reforms (such as under the Young Turks, the early Hashemite era and following the Second World War). It also examines those periods when the Iraqi media was most restricted and did little else than praise the regime at hand (such as under Ottoman rule and most recently under the Ba&dagger;th regime, especially under Saddam Hussein). Following on, this article reviews the developments since the fall of Saddam Hussein and, despite the extensive interference in Iraq&rsquo;s media sector from governmental entities both outside and inside Iraq, it concludes by arguing that these papers have been central to the re-emergence of an Iraqi public sphere which has openly debated and discussed the issues pertinent to post-Saddam Iraq.<br /

Media discourse and Iraq\u27s democratisation : reporting the 2005 constitution in the Australian and Middle Eastern print media

This paper analyses in detail the coverage of two milestones in Iraq\u27s shift towards democracy: the drafting and approval of the constitution by Iraq s interim government (August 2005) and the ratification of this constitution via the Iraqi polls (October 2005). Aside from some rudimentary quantitative analysis, a critical discourse analysis method is utilised to compare and contrast the discursive practices used in three of Australia s leading daily newspapers (The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) with three Middle Eastern English-language papers (The Daily Star, Anadolu Agency and the Jordan Times). The paper finds that the Australian print media continues the neo-Orientalist tradition of media coverage of Middle Eastern democracy, while the Middle Eastern press eschews these discourses in favour of a more open, varied debate on Iraq s constitution and the future of democracy across the region.<br /

Oil unions and democracy in post-Saddam Iraq

Since the invasion of 2003, a complex array of political, religious and ethno-sectarian factions have formed civil society movements; uncensored news has been consumed across the nation; ordinary citizens have taken to the streets to protest key government decisions; and various local councils have been formed, deliberating on key decisions facing their immediate communities. Given this context, this paper focuses on the specific case of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), Iraq&rsquo;s largest and most powerful independent workers union. The IFOU has repeatedly taken the Iraqi government to task over their poor pay and the dangerous nature of their work, as well as the government&rsquo;s initial kowtowing to US plans to privatise the entire Iraqi oil sector. To do this, the IFOU have utilised a variety of very democratic mechanisms including peaceful strikes and protests, media campaigns and political lobbying. Such moves have met with mixed results in Baghdad &ndash; at times the central government has pandered to the requests of IFOU, but it has also gone as far as issuing arrest warrants for its senior members. The IFOU therefore serve as an interesting example of public power in Iraq and may well pose one of the greatest challenges to rising authoritarianism there

Democracy building in post-Saddam Iraq : \u27historical memory\u27 and \u27primitive democracy\u27

Iraq&rsquo;s long and complex past has played a particularly poignant role in establishing and legitimating the various political movements that have ascended to power since the nation state was first created by the British in the early 1920s (Davis, 2005b). For example, the installed Hashemite monarchy that ruled Iraq until the 1958 revolution utilised their ancestral connection to the Prophet Muhammad to legitimate their claim of being the rightful legatees of the Arab lands, while later Saddam Hussein invoked the power of Iraq&rsquo;s Mesopotamian past to build nationalism and unite the people against ancient enemies such as during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.What is problematic about these examples of &lsquo;historical memory&rsquo; in Iraq is that they have also been used to justify a series of autocratic and despotic regimes that have attempted to quash Iraq&rsquo;s civil society and curtail any semblance of democratic reform. However, this paper argues that such &lsquo;historical memories&rsquo; may well be useful in reinvigorating the Iraqi public sphere and enabling the transition from despotism to democracy. To do this, this paper focuses on the ancient Mesopotamian practise of &lsquo;Primitive Democracy&rsquo; and argues that reinvigorating such histories may serve to legitimate and promote democratic governance within Iraq.<br /

Democracy: critiquing a Eurocentric history

This paper sets out an ambitious critique of contemporary political scientists, political historians and others concerned with the history of democracy. It argues that overwhelmingly the history of democracy relies on an overtly Eurocentric narrative that emphasizes the keystone moments of Western civilization. According to this narrative, democracy has a clear trajectory that can be traced from ancient experiments with participatory government in Greece and to a lesser extent in Rome, through the development of the British parliament, the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, and then finally onto the triumphant march of the liberal model of democracy across the globe over the last 200 years, particularly under Western tutelage. Histories of democracy that focus exclusively on these events not only privilege Europe and its successful colonies, but also miss the broader human story of the struggle for and achievement of democracy.This presents us with a distinct challenge. For those whose heritage does not include a direct link to Greek assemblies, the American Congress or the French Revolution, the &lsquo;standard history of democracy&rsquo; provides a distant and exclusive narrative, which limits one&rsquo;s ability to embrace democracy. This paper concludes by noting that, as democracy spreads out across the world today, political scientists not only need to break down the intellectual orthodoxy that democracy has exclusively Western roots, but also to embrace a more global view of democracy as a political practise that has been present at various times and in sometimes unfamiliar ways in the complex histories and rich cultural traditions of most of the people of the earth