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Explores past and contemporary issues affecting state-society relations in Iraq

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The activities of ISIS since 2014 have brought back to centre stage a series of very old and very troubling questions about the integrity and viability of the Iraqi state. However, most analysts have framed recent events in terms of their immediate past and without the contextual background to explain their evolution. State and Society in Iraq moves beyond a short-sighted analysis to place the complex and contested nature of Iraqi politics within a broader and deeper historical examination. In doing so, the chapters demonstrate that beyond the overwhelming emphasis on failed occupations, cruel tyrants, ethnic separatists and violent religious fanatics, is an Iraqi people who have routinely agitated against the state, advocated for legitimate and accountable government, and called for inter-communal harmony.When, the authors maintain, the Iraqi people are given agency in the complex process of consent, negotiation and resistance that underpin successful state-society relations, the nation can move beyond patterns of oppression and cruelty, of dangerous rhetoric and divisive politics, and towards a cohesive, peaceful and prosperous future - despite the many difficulties and the steep challenges that lie ahead.

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Introduction: State Society Relations in Iraq: Negotiating a Contested Historiography
Benjamin Isakhan and Fadi Dawood
Part I: Colonial Rule and the Making of Modern Iraq
Chapter 1: The Ba´qubah Refugee Camp, 1919-22: State-Society Relations in Occupied Iraq
Fadi Dawood
Chapter 2: State-Society Relations in the Iraqi Urban Sphere of Baghdad and Kirkuk, 1920-58
Arbella Bet-Shlimon
Chapter 3: The Government is the Servant of the People´: State and Society in the Short Stories of Shakir Khu?bak and Gha´ib ?u´ma Farman
Hilla Peled-Shapira
Chapter 4: Education Policy in Iraq, 1921-58: Competing Visions of the State
Hilary Falb Kalisman
Chapter 5: Military-Society Relations in Iraq, 1920-58: Competing Roles of the Army
Ibrahim Al-Marashi
Part II: Republican Iraq: State-Society Relations Under Authoritarian Rule
Dangerous liaisons´: Abd al-Karim Qasim and the Student Movements of the First Iraqi Republic, 1958-63
Jordi Tejel
Chapter 6: Rural Violence versus Urban Intellectualism: A Paradox of Integration and Emancipation
Alda Benjamen and Sargon George Donabed
Chapter 7: Ba`thi Iraq in the 1970s: Historiography of Medieval Islam and Contemporary Politics
Amatzia Baram
Chapter 8: Ba´thist Penetration of Shi´i Religious Institutions
Samuel Helfont
Part III: Communal Strife and Re-emergent Authoritarianism in Post-2003 Iraq
Chapter 9: The Consolidation of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the Integrity of the Iraqi State
Gareth Stansfield
Chapter 10: Political Parties, Elections and the Transformation of Iraqi Politics Since 2003
Marc Lemieux and Shamiran Mako
Chapter 11: The Road to the ´Islamic State´: State-Society Relations after the US Withdrawal from Iraq
Benjamin Isakhan
Conclusion: Lessons from the Past for a Future Iraq
Benjamin Isakhan and Shamiran Mako

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