Parliament Seeks Electoral Compromise

At any rate, if this kind of scenario should materialize, it would clearly support the interpretation that Maliki is unafraid of the Iraqi parliament because he chooses to ignore it, relying instead on rulings by the supreme court that consistently strengthen his hold on power.

The reality, as ever, is of course somewhere between these extreme, black and white interpretations. And the parliamentary elections of 2014 will in many ways decide which of the two scenarios prevails in the long term. Instead of seeking to impose particular preferences regarding Iraq’s electoral system or fetishizing the question of a third term for Maliki, Washington should use the visit of the Iraqi PM to provide the him with a gentle reminder that Iraq’s problems cannot be reduced to spillover from Syria alone.

Whilst there is nothing in the Iraqi constitution or democratic theory more broadly that stands in the way of a third term for Maliki, a failure on his part to build a broader and more inclusive electoral alliance could prevent him from succeeding for the third time. This is not the same as saying that any new government should be a power-sharing one (as opposed to a political-majority government).

It just implies that Maliki’s State of Law coalition in its current configuration looks very far from being capable of securing a majority in the next Iraqi national assembly, quite regardless of which method is adopted to count the votes and how many seats are allotted to each of the provinces.