Iraq’s Neoliberal Reconstruction and the Continued Relevance of the State

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the past several decades, social scientists and theorists have steadily moved away from understandings of power emphasizing the role of the nation-state, instead favoring explanations centering a multiplicity of actors and institutions as embedded in networks and relationships which traverse nations. The invasion of Iraq serves as a prime test case for theories of the operation of power in the twenty-first century, as the architects of the invasion relied upon a neoliberal vision of near-stateless governance, instead deferring to the free market and other non-state power arrangements. However, the rise of actors such as IS, who have consolidated power in large part through providing state-like services and who seek to build their own alternate state, challenges the move away from state-centric theories. As such, the invasion and its resulting aftermath has the potential to inform a number of arguments relating to the role of the modern state in developing, maintaining, and reproducing power relations. This article employs a Gramscian analysis of the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq to argue for the continued importance of the nation-state in our understanding of how power operates in contemporary globalization and neoliberalism.