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| Iraq-Jordan |
| The Iraq Constitution explained |
| 2004-03-11 |
| by Steven Den Beste, at his weblog "USS Clueless." I have been reading the Iraqi Constitution which was signed on Monday. It is not perfect by any means; there are aspects of it would could conceivably lead to trouble later. But taken as a whole I think it is an astounding piece of work, subtle and powerful and extremely well crafted. There are always challenges facing any group engaged in writing a constitution. In the case of the US framers working in Philadelphia in 1787, one of the most important was big-state/small-state. How would seats in the legislature be allocated? If they were proportional to population, small states feared becoming vassals of the large states, unable to influence the government. But if seats were allocated equally per state, citizens in big states would quite naturally feel resentment at having their votes diluted. This is an example of two natural risks facing any democratic system, which are known as the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the minority. If the system goes all the way and gives full power to majority rule, then the majority may use the system to seriously infringe the rights of dissenting minorities, whether they be ethnic, religious, political or life-style. On the other hand, if the system goes too far in the direction of giving such minorities the ability to block governmental action, they can gain the power to extort concessions from the majority by paralyzing the system if they don’t get what they want. Finding a balance between these two has always been difficult, and there is no ideal solution. . . . This is obviously just an excerpt--go read the full thing if you have the time, because it’s well worth it. Den Beste "back engineers" the Iraq interim constitution and compares it to the proposed EU monstrosity and our own rather elegant "bundle of compromises." |
| Posted by:Mike |