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- Volume 6, Issue 2, 2012
International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2012
Volume 6, Issue 2, 2012
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Restructuring and reorganization of the Iraqi oil ministry and state-owned oil companies for maximum economic growth and national development
More LessThis article summarizes the recommendations for the restructuring and reorganization of the oil industry in Iraq. The focus of the article is to use the restructuring and reorganization experience from national and international oil companies worldwide and to apply them to the Iraqi oil industry. The Iraq Federal Administration should ensure a pragmatic approach to its current policy objectives. The current or future government needs to put into operation new policy instruments to facilitate oil and gas sector institutional restructuring. Iraq should endeavour to produce its recoverable petroleum reserves optimally. The current administration must choose whether to allow the population to use the entire petroleum wealth derived from current petroleum production for their benefit or give future generations a share of the derived wealth from oil and gas development. The main objective of the policies is to make far-reaching changes and ensure the fundamental transformation of Iraqi oil and gas industry in order to optimize the development of the oil and gas industry; this in turn will hopefully maximize economic growth and overall country development. The development of the Iraqi oil and gas policies should be approved by the intended federal executive council under the chairmanship of the "Minister President". The first steps towards restructuring and reorganizing the institutions and the legislation include taking ownership of oil and gas resources, allocating acreages to Kurdistan/Iraq and neighbouring states, government participation, applying fiscal principles, and improving transparency and good governance. It is important to provide the institutional framework that governs the operations of the industry, including the functions, powers, structures and funding of these institutions. The operations in the upstream of the industry include licensing, leases and contracts. Other considerations covered are award processes, right of participation by the government, marginal fields, indigenous companies, termination and revocation of licences and leases, matters on fees, rents and royalties and finally provisions on associated natural gas.
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Monetary policy of the Central Bank of Iraq: Paradox of thrift in rental economy
More LessIn a rental economy enjoying a relative surplus in its balance of payment, where consumer dominance is maximized and development aspects are neutralized, the tightened monetary policy, although achieving stability and inflation reduction to a single digit, resulted in two gaps in the economy: The first gap resulted from investing bank's surpluses in risk-free monetary policy instruments with real positive interest rate and high return resulting in what is called 'risk crowding out', leading to weakening the general credit activity. The second gap resulted from the improvement of the Iraqi dinar exchange rate, which enhanced the purchasing power of government wages with no similar increase in productivity leading to wage increase in the entire labour market, also with no increase in productivity, a principle similar to 'Baumol's cost disease or Baumol effect'; this gap contributed to economic recession, which is called the principle of 'risk crowing in'.
Finally, stability was achieved in trade of 'risk crowding in' and 'risk crowding out' that neutralized economic development activity and usage due to poor consistency among different policies.
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Government budgeting and economic development in Iraq
By Jasim Al-AliThe bulk of revenue that is generated in the Iraqi economy comes from oil exports. The oil sector is an enclave sector with very little interaction with other areas of the economy. Government budgeting is the only medium by which development in the oil sector can be used to promote other areas of the economy. This demands a greater emphasis on the role of budgeting, as an important instrument for economic development. This article aims to discuss and explain this; however, the success of such a budget approach will be contingent upon clarity of accountability relationship, good governance, high skill capacity and environment stability.
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Towards establishing a viable macroeconomic and medium-term fiscal framework integrated approach for the Iraqi economy
More LessThis article intends to shed light on the importance of a functional link between medium-term macroeconomic framework and fiscal framework, to steer the economy towards achieving its development objectives and priorities in a coordinated manner. A medium-term macroeconomic framework should, however, delineate and quantify the main development objectives reflecting, to greater extent, the actual needs of the society and the strategic goals of the economy, such as positive real GDP growth, economic diversification, low rate of unemployment, manageable inflation rate and sectorial development priorities and sectorial allocation of investment/contribution to growth and development, poverty reduction and uplifting society's well-being. These and other objectives are obviously subject to a number of financial, investment, technical and absorptive capacity constraints. Accordingly, it is imperative, nonetheless, to optimize the state of the macroeconomy given these constraints. Thus, this derived feasible macroeconomic setting should be used as the main developmental base to structure the country's medium-term fiscal and budgetary framework. By doing so, the national economy would achieve, the aimed at, macroeconomic stability - achieving real growth without bottlenecks - and longer-term fiscal sustainability.
Furthermore, the article would attempt to bring together all significant development pillars in an integrated framework to produce a more developmental oriented federal budget for the Iraqi economy. This would be approached analytically with relevant illustrations.
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De-sectarianizing patterns of political mobilization in the post-conflict Iraq
By Keiko SakaiSectarian identity has played a significant role in electoral politics in Iraq after 2003. As in the cases related to the former Yugoslavia, ethic/sectarian cleavages are often mobilized when majority systems are introduced instantly through elections. In Iraq, electoral blocs were formed along sectarian lines in order to gain a majority of voters collectively, in a situation where most of the major political parties were composed of expatriates and had not yet established nationwide supportive bases inside Iraq. Mobilization patterns are diverse; United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) relied on sectarian networks, mainly in the southern governorates, while Iraqiya succeeded in obtaining a majority of votes in the central regions by combining various sources of mobilization, such as tribal, local and kinship networks, through which the fame of candidates was established. Differences among political parties in the patterns of nominating candidates depended on those in the previous regime. Iraqiya followed a similar pattern of mobilization during the former ruling system, while the al-Da'wa Party in UIA pursued absorption of local power into their own party structure, which caused conflicts between provincial political elites and the central government in 2011. Once the period during which competition for the ruling position in the central political authority has passed, forms of political contention other than sectarian rivalries emerge.
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The emasculation of government ministries in consociational democracies: The case of Iraq
More LessThis article discusses power-sharing in Iraq as a case of consociational democracy. It is argued that in post-2003 Iraq, consociational features have been employed to an extent that goes beyond what is normal for power-sharing democracies. Not only unspoken ethno-sectarian quota arrangements are used in the country's legislature and executive, but also attempts to impose such features through extra-constitutional councils aimed at weakening existing executive and prime ministerial powers are frequent. The article examines three such attempts: the political council of national security (2006), the federal oil and gas council in the draft oil and gas law (2007) and the projected national council for high policies (2010-11). It is concluded that support for the moves towards greater dispersal (and fragmentation) of state power in Iraq comes not only from the Kurds, but also from the secular Iraqiya party, United States and Iran.
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REVIEW ESSAY
By Eric DavisTHE IRAQI REVOLUTION OF 1958: A REVOLUTIONARY QUEST FOR UNITY AND SECURITY, JUAN ROMERO (2011) Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 241 pp., ISBN-10: 0761852581, ISBN-13: 978-0761852582, £41.95 (hbk).
FROM DICTATORSHIP TO DEMOCRACY: AN INSIDER'S ACCOUNT OF THE IRAQI OPPOSITION TO SADDAM, HAMID AL-BAYATI (2011) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 347 pp., ISBN-10: 0812242882, ISBN-13: 978-0812242881, £20.70 (pbk).
IRAQ, DEMOCRACY AND THE FUTURE OF THE ARAB WORLD, ALI PAYA AND JOHN ESPOSITO, EDS. (2011) New York: Routledge, 220 pp., ISBN-10: 0415697905, ISBN-13: 978-0415697903, £23.70 (pbk).
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BOOK REVIEW
More LessTHE OTTOMAN ORIGINS OF MODERN IRAQ: POLITICAL REFORM, MODERNIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY MIDDLE EAST, EBUBEKIR CEYLAN (2011) London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 297 + xvi pp., ISBN 978-1-84885-425-3 (hbk), £50.58.
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