Tom Ricks is convinced that the future of Iraq is bleak, as evidenced by the assassination of Ali al-Lami, the official in charge of Iraq’s controversial de-Baathification efforts. This occurred against the backdrop of anti-American protests led by the Sadrist movement.

All we can safely say is that the resource curse is likely to play a significant role. As we discussed in yesterday’s post on Somaliland, the presence of point-source natural resources has serious consequences for a state’s political evolution. The stakes for seizing total control of the Iraqi state are high. Mitigating circumstances include the fact that Iraqi Kurdistan’s autonomy is undergirded by significant latent (and not-so-latent) military potential, which suggests that the Iraqi center will have to engage in a form of “revenue-bargaining” with the Kurdish region, yet the Kurdish region itself still has a somewhat authoritarian character. But the ingredients for the kind of revenue-bargaining that encourage transparent, clean government don’t seem to be present, a condition that, as Timur Kuran argues, obtains in much of the Arab Middle East:

The preconditions for democracy are lacking in the Arab world partly because Hosni Mubarak and other Arab dictators spent the past half-century emasculating the news media, suppressing intellectual inquiry, restricting artistic expression, banning political parties, and co-opting regional, ethnic and religious organizations to silence dissenting voices.
But the handicaps of Arab civil society also have historical causes that transcend the policies of modern rulers. Until the establishment of colonial regimes in the late 19th century, Arab societies were ruled under Shariah law, which essentially precludes autonomous and self-governing private organizations. Thus, while Western Europe was making its tortuous transition from arbitrary rule by monarchs to democratic rule of law, the Middle East retained authoritarian political structures. Such a political environment prevented democratic institutions from taking root and ultimately facilitated the rise of modern Arab dictatorships.

On the other hand, I’m reminded of Reuel Marc Gerecht’s argument that while Arab democracy won’t prove to be terribly liberal, it will be extremely difficult to reverse. And in turn, a more inclusive political process will speed the process of “political maturation,” to use a condescending phrase. That is, millenarianism will increasingly give way to meliorism.