The People, the State, and Questions of Legitimation

Chapter 1 opens with the question of how to achieve normative legitimacy of the state (legitimation). How does the state become accepted and expected by a population to be the arbitrator of their collective life? The chapter reviews legitimation crises in Iraq at four key historical junctures: the foundational moment in 1921, the 1958 revolutionary coup d’etat, and the 1990s in the lead-up to the post-2003 state. Drawing on the work of Iraqi sociologist and public intellectual Ali al-Wardi, this chapter argues that legitimation of a state’s ruling principles (normative legitimation) is linked to a state’s ability to address social injustice. Furthermore, social injustice is intrinsic to any state order. A robust democracy is the only reliable mechanism through which to uncover the nature of injustice – and ways of addressing it – at any given time and space, and thereby avoid a legitimation crisis.