Review When Parliaments Ruled the Middle East, Iraq and Syria, 1946-63

Rey, Matthieu, When Parliaments Ruled the Middle East, Iraq and Syria, 1946-63, Cairo New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2022

 

Matthieu Rey in When Parliaments Ruled the Middle East, Iraq and Syria, 1946-63 doesn’t provide a completely convincing argument that parliamentary democracy became the basis of post-World War II politics in Iraq and Syria. Rey’s thesis is that during the end of the Ottoman period until the early 1960s a new elite emerged in Iraq and Syria that wanted Western style political reforms and pushed parliamentarianism as the way to achieve them. It expanded representation but also led to divisions which eventually ended the system. Rey does prove that parliamentarism persisted in both countries despite coups and would be autocrats. On the other hand he downplays many issues like corrupt elections, how assemblies lacked power and how there were never any substantive reforms. That’s why his book doesn’t completely pass the test.

 

Rey lays out his point of view about parliamentarianism in Iraq and Syria in the introduction. He begins with the end of the Ottoman era where various groups began pushing political changes to try to preserve the empire. In 1876 for instance a constitution was passed which established two assemblies in an attempt to create a modern government that would put the Ottomans at the same level as their European rivals. Prominent urban families in what would become Iraq and Syria elected most of the representatives something that would persist into the independence era and what Rey called an aristocratic system. This gave rise to the idea of parliaments as a means to modernize the Middle East and give voice to the new elites that were emerging in the Ottoman provinces. During the British Mandate of the 1920s and Syrian independence in the 1940s parliaments were created for the new nations. That led to more people organizing and trying to play a role in the state. In 1947 three opposition parties ran for parliament in Iraq that ranged from social democratic to Arab nationalist that all agreed on some sort of political and social reform. The Iraqi Communist Party also emerged as the largest group in the country. They represented the new urban middle class that was forming. One of the author’s strongest points was the persistence of parliamentarianism in Iraq and Syria. There were various coups in Syria for example and yet afterwards the country returned to parliamentarianism. Rey also writes that the various assemblies pushed reforms like expanding education and made the state the director of the economy through development projects and support for industry. The system did not open for the lower classes and couldn’t handle political divisions however which eventually led to coups and military rule that ended the system in 1958 in Iraq and 1963 in Syria. The problem is Rey’s argument doesn’t stand up to some of his own writing and he ignores contradictory evidence.

 

There are many problems with When Parliament Ruled the Middle East. First, parliaments in Iraq and Syria could pass budgets but otherwise were largely debating societies. The real power rested in the Syrian president and Iraqi prime minister. Rey wrote that they had to get support of parliament but that was not always true. The presidents and premiers also formed cabinets which did not answer to the assemblies. Nuri al-Said was prime minister of Iraq nine times and noted for assuring British influence over the country and constant crackdowns on the reformist parties and the ending of political freedoms by banning parties and the press and arresting politicians. Parliament didn’t always support him which goes with Rey’s argument but most of the time they did because they were packed by Said supporters. That brings up the second issue that Iraqi elections were often fixed by the leading politicians like Said to assure a pliant assembly. There was also plenty of political violence in Syria during balloting. The author mentions this in passing. He was willing to admit that democracy was limited in Iraq and Syria to elites but he wouldn’t go into how much cheating was involved to assure their rule. Third, the book constantly mentions reforms but barely explains them and does so incompletely. In Iraq he focuses upon the Development Board which used oil revenues to build things like irrigation projects. The vast majority of those however were aimed at supporting the landed elite who made up many of the MPs. It didn’t support reforms therefore but the status quo. This might have been why Rey spends so little time explaining just what type of changes the two parliaments were able to pass. Last, the author says the parliamentary systems finally ended in 1963. That was when the Baathists took power in a coup in Syria. There was a military coup in Iraq in 1958 that created an autocracy and parliament was never brought back but in order to accommodate the Syrian experience Rey extends the date to 1963. If When Parliaments Ruled the Middle East was willing to acknowledge the deep flaws in Iraq and Syria more often it would have been a much better account. Instead it seems like the author skims over issues that don’t prove his point.

 

Matthieu Rey wrote a very inconsistent book. As the title suggests he believed that from the end of the Ottoman empire to the 1960s parliaments ruled Iraq and Syria. He’s convincing about how the political system survived attempts at military rule and autocracy and that some new classes were given voice but what he was really describing was oligarchic republics rather than real democracies. The same small group of politicians would be named prime minister in Iraq for example over and over and picked candidates for the assemblies through their ties with local elites that determined the voting. Iraq and Syria never carried out any serious reforms during this period despite Rey claiming they did. That was what eventually led to the coups and the end of parliaments. The author acknowledges that the poor and lower middle class were never let into politics as the root cause of this turn of events but doesn’t mention that the changes he touts actually increased their alienation from the system by supporting the rich. Overall, the book does add some new scholarship on the roles of parliament in Iraq and Syria which has been neglected in many histories which focus upon leaders and foreign powers which is why it’s worthwhile to read. At the same time it only proves part of its thesis.

 

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