Democracy in Iraq

Dr Benjamin Isakhan, Research Fellow, Centre for Comparative Social Research, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

'This book is a serious and in-depth reading of Iraqi political history. Isakhan's argument, bolstered by an impressive array of source material, is a direct affront to the use of violence to impose a wholesale American "democracy" on a society that has its own rich history of egalitarian and collective forms of governance.' Muhsin Al-Musawi, Columbia University, USA 'Democracy in Iraq expertly excavates democratic traditions that have long been buried in Western Orientalism and Bathist totalitarianism. In demonstrating that a will towards collective and participatory governance has existed over the centuries, Benjamin Isakhan rescues assessments for Iraqi democratisation from the kind of negative determinism, deracinated from history and local culture, that has dominated scholarly and policy debates.' James Piscatori, Durham University, UK

• A Note on Translation and Transliteration; Prelude: In the Beginning; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1 Discourses of Democracy; Chapter 2 Democracy in Ancient Iraq; Chapter 3 Islam and Democracy in Iraq; Chapter 4 Discourses of Democracy in Colonial Iraq; Chapter 5 Oppression and Resistance in Post-Colonial Iraq; Chapter 6 Occupation and Democracy in Re-Colonial Iraq; Chapter 101 Conclusion;