Michael Totten has a really good piece in today’s Opinion Journal talking about how it is Lebanon, not Iraq, that is the Middle East’s first liberal democracy. I’m certainly inclined to agree with him. Lebanon is just about everything we could hope to strive for in Iraq over the next decade.

A lot of his article focuses on the electoral system used in Lebanon, which is very strange by Western standards but guarantees people’s liberties by forcing the different groups in the country to share power. He says that, “Syria and Iraq, which also are composed of rival ethnic-religious sects, may do well under a similar system.” Indeed. You may be surprised to find out that Lebanese consociationalism as a model for Iraq was the subject of much policy discussion prior to the writing of the constitution. I even had to write a ten page paper on the subject awhile back. However, since its rather outdated, let’s just take a brief look at how the electoral system in Iraq is close to that of Lebanon.

What Lebanon’s system does is empower groups in order to protect the rights of individuals. It does this by setting aside certain positions in governments for certain religious groups, dividing parliament into half Christian and half Muslim membership, and by allocating a 1/3 minority veto to prevent any one group from overwhelming another. While Iraq doesn’t distinctly formalize sectarianism in the system — as that is one of the potentials of consociationalism, just look at how Lebanon’s old system collapsed the country into civil war — it does, however, do away with the majoritarian system.

In order to form a government, Iraq’s parliament must acquire the votes of 2/3 of its members. This means that while the various sectarian groups in Iraq aren’t specifically forced to cooperate as they are in Lebanon, enough votes are required to form a government that it must be inclusive of most if not all groups in order to do so. A majoritarian system would have likely created a near dictatorship by the Shia, but this system ensures that the Sunnis won’t be left out of the government.

Consociationalism is a kind of government that does not necessarily focus on individuals as citizens with rights, but instead looks at groups as securing those rights for their members. Iraq is therefore not a full democracy, at least, as we in the West might see it through our majoritarian systems. It is more transitional; a stable way for decisions to be made without one group overpowering another, and to facilitate for the day that Iraqi political groups are based on more than sectarian interests, and individuals voting based on their conscious over their familiar loyalties