What do you think?
Rate this book
State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein
A new account of modern Iraqi politics that overturns the conventional wisdom about its sectarian divisionsHow did Iraq become one of the most repressive dictatorships of the late twentieth century? The conventional wisdom about Iraq's modern political history is that the country was doomed by its diverse social fabric. But in State of Repression, Lisa Blaydes challenges this belief by showing that the country's breakdown was far from inevitable. At the same time, she offers a new way of understanding the behavior of other authoritarian regimes and their populations.Drawing on archival material captured from the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'th Party in the wake of the 2003 US invasion, Blaydes illuminates the complexities of political life in Iraq, including why certain Iraqis chose to collaborate with the regime while others worked to undermine it. She demonstrates that, despite the Ba'thist regime's pretensions to political hegemony, its frequent reliance on collective punishment of various groups reinforced and cemented identity divisions. In addition, a series of costly external shocks to the economy--resulting from fluctuations in oil prices and Iraq's war with Iran—weakened the capacity of the regime to monitor, co-opt, coerce, and control factions of Iraqi society.In addition to calling into question the common story of modern Iraqi politics, State of Repression offers a new explanation of why and how dictators repress their people in ways that can inadvertently strengthen regime opponents.
366 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 10, 2018
9 people are currently reading
146 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 17, 2018
Historians and political scientists don't always mix, so I didn't agree with every aspect of this book. Nonetheless, there's a great deal of value and illumination here about IQ under the Baathists. One of the strongest aspect of the book is the sources. Blaydes draws from a wide range of declassified documents about the internal functioning of the regime. The book is brand spanking new, and she is bringing many of these docs to light for the first time.
The main argument is that the Iraqi regime faced the intertwined problems of legibility and resources during its tenure. Legibility here means the ability to know the personnel and dynamics of a community. High legibility allows authoritarian states to pinpoint repression to individuals and to penetrate communities effectively. Low legibility means that the state often must punish more indiscriminately. One odd but interesting implication of this argument is that more loyal, central communities like the Sunni may be more infiltrated and controlled than less trusted, less central groups. The regime wanted to create a broader national identity, but its dwindling resources and increasing precariousness over the years of war and sanctions forced it to rely on a smaller base of Tikriti Sunni tribes. In the meantime, they used blunt force and the withdrawal of state resources to crush Shia and Kurdish revolts. This oppression helped these groups see themselves more as larger, united blocs or nations, a process with major consequences for the post 2003 occupation and Iraqi politics since then.
One broad critique I have of the book is there seems to be little role for emotion and ideology in Iraqi political behavior. I'm sure political scientists are tired of hearing this from historians. Here's an example: Blaydes seems to argue that the regime didn't want to use blunt or excessive force to maintain control. This seems to me to be a very dry, hyper-rationalist approach to violence in Baathist Iraq. Not only were many of these men borderline paranoid psychopaths, they also had a totalizing ideology that enabled them to commit mass acts of violence with a sense of total justification. Moreover, Iraqi political culture had had violence at its heart for a long time, especially in the late 1950s as the series of rolling coups commenced. The idea that all of this violence was instrumental is belied by the normalization of violence in this society, as well as the genuine, almost radicalized hatred displayed for the Kurds during and after Anfal. This is a broader problem I see in much political science: almost any violence can be described as rational as long as it has a political purpose. It is, of course, easy to find political purposes for almost any act. The mass violence and terror perpetrated by this regime were not attempts to do just enough to stay in power, but a flexing of will and domination, motivated by political culture, ideology, and psychology. The regime's marking of the bodies of its victims through torture and public mutilation speaks to this broader reality.
I also thought the book leaned a little too hard on the constructivist interpretation of Iraqi ethno-sectarian conflict. Blaydes argues that these Kurdish-Shia-Sunni split wasn't really a thing in Iraqi politics until the 1980s and 1990s, when repression caused the Shia and Sunni to coalesce as communities or nations. And yet, I found that her evidence repeatedly belied this fact. In her extensive documentation of regime and civilian activities almost always found that Sunnis demonstrated more support for the regime and received more in return, while Kurds and Shia did less. At no point does Blaydes refute the argument, put forth by Dodge and Tripp among others, that since its founding Shia had largely been excluded from power, and Kurds even more so. She convincingly shows that repression helped these identities coalesce and intensify (as did the US occupation), but they didn't emerge out of nowhere. Clearly there was a baseline sense of difference that the regime never overcame in its brief nation-building process. I'm open to refutation on this point, nonetheless, given that I study the American side of things a lot more than the Iraqi side(s).
I'd recommend this book to scholars of authoritarianism, Middle Eastern politics, and Iraqi history/politics more generally. I will definitely put it to use in my dissertation.
The main argument is that the Iraqi regime faced the intertwined problems of legibility and resources during its tenure. Legibility here means the ability to know the personnel and dynamics of a community. High legibility allows authoritarian states to pinpoint repression to individuals and to penetrate communities effectively. Low legibility means that the state often must punish more indiscriminately. One odd but interesting implication of this argument is that more loyal, central communities like the Sunni may be more infiltrated and controlled than less trusted, less central groups. The regime wanted to create a broader national identity, but its dwindling resources and increasing precariousness over the years of war and sanctions forced it to rely on a smaller base of Tikriti Sunni tribes. In the meantime, they used blunt force and the withdrawal of state resources to crush Shia and Kurdish revolts. This oppression helped these groups see themselves more as larger, united blocs or nations, a process with major consequences for the post 2003 occupation and Iraqi politics since then.
One broad critique I have of the book is there seems to be little role for emotion and ideology in Iraqi political behavior. I'm sure political scientists are tired of hearing this from historians. Here's an example: Blaydes seems to argue that the regime didn't want to use blunt or excessive force to maintain control. This seems to me to be a very dry, hyper-rationalist approach to violence in Baathist Iraq. Not only were many of these men borderline paranoid psychopaths, they also had a totalizing ideology that enabled them to commit mass acts of violence with a sense of total justification. Moreover, Iraqi political culture had had violence at its heart for a long time, especially in the late 1950s as the series of rolling coups commenced. The idea that all of this violence was instrumental is belied by the normalization of violence in this society, as well as the genuine, almost radicalized hatred displayed for the Kurds during and after Anfal. This is a broader problem I see in much political science: almost any violence can be described as rational as long as it has a political purpose. It is, of course, easy to find political purposes for almost any act. The mass violence and terror perpetrated by this regime were not attempts to do just enough to stay in power, but a flexing of will and domination, motivated by political culture, ideology, and psychology. The regime's marking of the bodies of its victims through torture and public mutilation speaks to this broader reality.
I also thought the book leaned a little too hard on the constructivist interpretation of Iraqi ethno-sectarian conflict. Blaydes argues that these Kurdish-Shia-Sunni split wasn't really a thing in Iraqi politics until the 1980s and 1990s, when repression caused the Shia and Sunni to coalesce as communities or nations. And yet, I found that her evidence repeatedly belied this fact. In her extensive documentation of regime and civilian activities almost always found that Sunnis demonstrated more support for the regime and received more in return, while Kurds and Shia did less. At no point does Blaydes refute the argument, put forth by Dodge and Tripp among others, that since its founding Shia had largely been excluded from power, and Kurds even more so. She convincingly shows that repression helped these identities coalesce and intensify (as did the US occupation), but they didn't emerge out of nowhere. Clearly there was a baseline sense of difference that the regime never overcame in its brief nation-building process. I'm open to refutation on this point, nonetheless, given that I study the American side of things a lot more than the Iraqi side(s).
I'd recommend this book to scholars of authoritarianism, Middle Eastern politics, and Iraqi history/politics more generally. I will definitely put it to use in my dissertation.
Read
November 1, 2020not good
September 20, 2020
The relationship between Saddam and Iraq’s Kurdish region was so interesting. I would love to see this book extended, with more of these archives, Baathist meetings, and documents!
December 5, 2023
interesting, kind of repetitive, but overall interesting
Read
March 22, 2019956.7044 B6456 2018
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews