Tahseen Wsu Abdullah
Since 2003, Iraq has lived with a constitutional paradox that has never been resolved. The country claims to be federal, yet it is governed as a centralized state with limited decentralization. This contradiction lies at the heart of Iraq’s political instability.
The 2005 Constitution, in Article 1, declares Iraq a federal state. Articles 117 and 121 grant regions the right to have their own legislative, executive, and judicial powers, and Article 115 even states that in case of conflict between regional and central law in shared competencies, regional law prevails. On paper, this is a strong federal model, close to Germany or the United States.
However, Article 122 and the Law of Governorates Not Organized in a Region No. 21 of 2008 introduce a completely different concept: political and administrative decentralization. Under this model, governorates like Basra, Anbar, Nineveh, and Najaf are not federal units. They cannot legislate independently; they can only implement central laws with some administrative autonomy. They have elected councils but no independent judiciary and no constitutional veto.
This creates what Iraqi scholars call “one-legged federalism.” Iraq has only one federal region – the Kurdistan Region – facing fifteen decentralized governorates and a hyper-centralized capital, Baghdad. No federation in the world operates like this. In the US there are 50 states, in Germany 16 Länder, in India 28 states. All units have the same status. In Iraq, there is inequality by design.
Why did other governorates fail to become regions? Between 2008 and 2018, Basra submitted two formal requests to become a region, and Anbar, Salah al-Din, and Diyala attempted the same. All were blocked politically. The core reason is oil. Article 112 of the Constitution states that oil and gas are owned by all Iraqis, but it fails to define management. If Basra, which holds nearly 80% of Iraq’s proven reserves, becomes a federal region, it could claim stronger control over its resources. Baghdad, which depends on oil for 90% of its budget, views strong decentralization as a threat to its financial survival.
The Federal Supreme Court has deepened this ambiguity. Its 2022 ruling declaring the Kurdistan Region’s oil and gas law unconstitutional contradicted Article 115 and signaled a clear centralist turn. The Court, originally intended to be the arbiter of federalism, has increasingly become the protector of central authority, undermining the trust that federalism requires.
Comparative experience is instructive. Iraq is closer to Nigeria than to Germany. Nigeria is also a multi-ethnic, oil-dependent federation where federalism failed because revenue allocation kept all power in the center. When money is centralized, no unit truly wants autonomy because it fears losing transfers. Like Nigeria, Iraq suffers from what French philosopher Alain Deneault calls “mediocracy” – a system where mediocre loyalists are appointed to manage complex federal arrangements they cannot understand, making failure inevitable.
What is the way forward? Iraq needs to make a choice it has avoided for twenty years.
First, it must activate Article 65 of the Constitution, which calls for a Federation Council – a second chamber representing regions and governorates, similar to the US Senate or German Bundesrat. Without it, there is no institutional “shared rule.”
Second, it must finally pass the Federal Oil and Gas Law, pending since 2007, to clarify Articles 111 and 112.
Third, it must decide on a coherent model: either move to a symmetrical federalism of five or six large regions, as proposed by many Iraqi intellectuals, or adopt a strong decentralized model like France, where all governorates have equal expanded powers.