New Political Science, Volume 26, Number 3, September 2004COMMENTARYWhat to Expect from US “Democracy Promotion” inIraqWilliam I. RobinsonUniversity of California–Santa BarbaraThe US plan for “promoting democracy” in Iraq is an integral component of itsoverall interventionist project in the Middle East. US rulers are deeply dividedover the invasion and occupation of Iraq and they face an expanding foreignpolicy crisis. Nonetheless, there is consensus among them, and among transna-tional elites more generally, on political intervention under the rubric of“democracy promotion.” Such political intervention is not just a Republican,much less a Bush regime, policy. As such, it plays a key legitimating functionand can be expected to become a central component of overall US strategy inIraq in the coming months and years.Washington’s plan for “political transition” in Iraq involves the election ofconstituent assembly in December 2004, in the wake of the alleged “restoration”of Iraqi sovereignty in June 2004,1to be followed by general elections inDecember 2005. The US government had already allocated by early 2004 at least$458 million dollars for a program to “promote democracy” in Iraq.2Thecontours of this program are not yet clear. But judging by the general pattern ofUS “democracy promotion” around the world, we can expect that this programwill involve funding by Washington through numerous channels—both overtand covert—of political parties and other elite forums in Iraq, as well as a seriesof organizations in Iraqi civil society, among them, trade unions, businesscouncils, media outlets, student and women’s groups, and professional associa-tions.3These “democracy promotion programs” are part of a larger “four step” planfor the entire Middle East, announced by Washington in 2003, using its1At the time of writing (April 2004), the US State Department maintained that on June30, 2004, sovereignty would be turned over to an expanded Iraq Governing Council(IGC), the unelected Council of 25 appointees hand-picked by the US occupationauthority.2“Iraq: One Year Later: Transition, But to What?” Los Angeles Times, 20 March, 2004.3For more detailed history and analysis on US “democracy promotion” and back-ground to the present commentary, see William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Global-ization, U.S. Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),and A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention in the Nicaraguan Elections and American ForeignPolicy in the Post-Cold War Era (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992).ISSN 0739-3148 print/ISSN 1469-9931 online/04/030000–00  2004 Caucus for a New Political ScienceDOI: 10.1080/0739314042000251351442 William I. Robinsonoccupation of Iraq as leverage.4The first of these steps was a resolution of thePalestinian–Israeli conflict (the “road map” has, of course, since collapsed). Thesecond was a “Middle East Partnership” to “build a civil society” in the region.Such “civil society” programs typically attempt to groom new transnationally-oriented elites, and in this case, to incorporate the Arab masses into a civilsociety under the hegemony of these elites. The third was the region’s furtherintegration into the global economy through liberalization and structural adjust-ment. And the fourth was preventing the rise of any regional military challengeto the emerging US/transnational domination. The overall objective was to forceon the region a more complete integration into global capitalism.The US has three goals for the political system it will attempt to put intoplace in Iraq. The first is to cultivate transnationally-oriented elites who shareWashington’s interest in integrating Iraq into the global capitalist system andwho can administer the local state being constructed under the tutelage of theoccupation force. The second is to isolate those counter-elites who are notamenable to the US project, such as nationally- (as opposed to transnationally-)oriented elites and others in a position of leadership, authority and influence,who do not share US goals. The third is to establish the hegemony of this eliteover the Iraqi masses, to prevent the mass of Iraqis from becoming politicizedand mobilized on their own independent of or in opposition to the US project,by incorporating them “consensually” into the political order the US wishes toestablish.The type of political system Washington will attempt to establish in Iraq haslittle to do with democracy and should not be referred to as such, as theterminology itself is ideological and intended to give an aura of legitimacy to USintervention. It does not involve power (cratos) of the people (demos), much lessan end to class and foreign domination or to substantive inequality. Thispolitical system is more accurately termed polyarchy (a term I have borrowedfrom Robert Dahl and modified)—a system in which a small group actuallyrules on behalf of (transnational) capital and mass participation in decision-mak-ing is limited to choosing among competing elites in tightly controlled electoralprocesses.5US policymakers began to promote polyarchy in the 1980s and 1990s aroundthe world through novel mechanisms of political intervention, abandoning thedictatorships and authoritarian regimes that they had relied on for much of thepost WWII period to assure social control and political influence in the formercolonial world. This shift in policy took place in the context of globalization andin response to the crisis of elite rule that had developed in much of the ThirdWorld in the 1970s. Behind the new policy was an effort to hijack and redirectmass democratization struggles, to undercut popular demands for more funda-mental change in the social order, to help emerging transnationally-orientedelites secure state power through highly-contested transitions, and to use thatpower to integrate (or reintegrate) their countries into the new global capitalism.Seen in more theoretical abstraction, the policy shift represented an effort bytransnational elites to reconstitute hegemony through a change in the mode of4See Robin Wright, “U.S. to Press a Four-Step Plan for Transforming the Mideast,” LosAngeles Times, 20 April, 2003, p. A4.5See Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy, op. cit.US “Democracy Promotion” in Iraq 443political domination, from the coercive systems of social control exercised byauthoritarian and dictatorial regimes to more