Book reviews: Policing Iraq: Legitimacy, Democracy, and Empire in a Developing State

Abstract

The scope of the book “POLICING IRAQ: LEGITIMACY, DEMOCRACY, AND EMPIRE IN A DEVELOPING STATE” which is published by the University of California Press in 2021, is broad and would be of interest to not only academics (sociology, political science, and criminal justice), but also anyone interested in developments in the Middle East. The author, Jesse Wozniak, an associate professor at West Virginia University, successfully intersects several complex issues (policing, state legitimacy, occupation, neoliberalism, democracy, and institution building) and articulates new and important knowledge. The book focuses on the police and the legal justice system in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq. Wozniak uses a postconflict reconstruction program by the United States and its allies in Iraq post-2003 as an example for how neoliberalism has been applied and is reflected in the state’s institutions and its functions. He made multiple trips to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, from 2011 to 2017, during which he gathered a wide range of data, including ethnographic observations, interviews, surveys of police officers and judges. He also used various written documents, including government publications, syllabi from the academy of police, human rights reports, and news articles from local and international media outlets. The central argument of the book is that the modern nation-state can be defined by the functions of its criminal justice systems and especially the police. With his historically informed analysis of policing in Iraq in post-2003, Wozniak shows how neoliberalism in the case of Iraq had failed and created unwanted consequences for the Iraqi people. This is so because the state is neither politically independent nor sovereign, and hence unable to function effectively. Chapter 1 begins by a description of life and political circumstances in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan, where Wozniak conducted his study. In Chapter 2, the author discusses the nature of the nation-state in terms of legitimacy, effectiveness, and sovereignty and demonstrates how the institution of policing in the Iraqi was negatively impacted by the American-led invasion. Chapter 3 discusses how the post-2003 neoliberal state building efforts by the United States and its allies not only exacerbated persistent problems in Iraq but also created new ones, including corruption, ghost payrolls, and emerging uncontrollable nonstate actors who sometimes act as a quasi-government. Moreover, according to Wozniak, “the few remaining operational state-owned firms were explicitly prohibited from participating in the repair of any of the damaged facilities” (p.54). Therefore, if the many neoliberal reforms which were designed to primarily benefit the United States and its coalition partners, it came with a heavy cost for the Iraqi people. And the promise of democracy and neoliberal prosperity did not materialize for anyone except for a few politicians and opportunists. In Chapters 4 and 5, Wozniak focuses on police training and routine police practices and shows how the distinction 1199295 COS0010.1177/00207152231199295International Journal of Comparative SociologyBook Reviews book-review2023