Mako Discusses State-Building in Post-2003 Iraq

Shamiran Mako, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, appeared on the “Iraqi Voices” podcast to discuss state-building in post-2003 Iraq and how legacies of exclusion continue to shape politics today.

Mako said that the lack of centralized democratic institutions in Iraq should not come as a surprise given the expedient state-building in the country post-2003. She argues that the ethnosectarian elite has captured state institutions and propagated their own rule rather than building out capable, technocratic governance. She goes on to comment on the role of the United States in shaping Iraqi state-building, the cost of U.S. hubris, the findings of her most recent book project on institution structure, mobilization, and ethnic conflict across time, and much more.

The full podcast can be listened to below.

Shamiran Makois an assistant professor of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. She is also a member of the Graduate Faculty at the Political Science Department at Boston University.Her research explores the historical and contemporary drivers of inter and intra-state conflicts that produce weak and fragile states across the MENA region. She is the author of After the Uprisings: Progress and Stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa, with Valentine Moghadam. Read more about Professor Mako on her faculty profile.