State of Repression by Blaydes Lisa

Author:Blaydes, Lisa [Blaydes, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780691180274
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

Independent Political Orientation

Chapter 2 sets out a number of empirical expectations that might be evaluated using data on a student’s willingness to state that he has a Baʿthist political orientation. I argue that investment in the regime depends on current and future reward streams, as well as expectations about the investment of others in the regime.

In addition, the decision to join the Baʿth Party could engender forms of psychological discomfort for individuals. While some students had personal or familial experience with the effects of regime repression, others felt as though their ethnic group, religious order, or tribe had been mistreated by the regime. Consequently, individual behavior was a function of both the repressive environment and one’s investment in the regime. For individuals from groups outside of the regime coalition, any suggestion of disloyalty might bring scrutiny, reducing the incentive to express one’s true feelings toward the Baʿth Party.

Figure 7.1 displays four maps of Iraq. The panel in the upper-left shows the distribution of politically independent students for the 1987–1988 academic year—the last year of the Iran-Iraq War. While data were either not collected or not available for Tikrit and adjacent districts, it is apparent that areas of northern districts around Sulaymaniyya and Mosul had large numbers of politically independent students, as did Basra. The relatively large numbers of politically independent students in Basra is not surprising given the concentration of Iran-Iraq War casualties there. Low levels of Baʿth Party political identification in Iraqi Kurdistan is also unsurprising given the events associated with the Anfal. Across majority Sunni areas, there was variation in the percentage of politically independent students where Fallujah and Ramadi appear to have witnessed larger numbers of students who eschewed Baʿth Party identification. During this period, to self-identify as a political independent was a choice available to individuals.

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