The problem of complicity in regime violence has remained prevalent in trials against heads of state as well as in attempts to promote justice and reconciliation programs following civil wars where a majority of the population is implicated in the commission of crimes against humanity and genocide. By re-defining complicity as 'social' complicity, this project aims to provide a different lens for understanding the ways in which regime violence is legitimized. In doing so, the project uses the work Leopold Sacher-Masoch to look at social complicity through the lens of 'transubstantiatory violence. It is argued throughout that transubstantiatory violence produces social complicity and in doing so provides legitimacy to otherwise illegitimate violence. Furthermore, this project will take Iraq as a site of investigation in order to think through the relationship between regime violence and social complicity. In this sense, regime violence is looked at within the space of chthonic security as opposed to that of war. Overall, the aim of this project is to provide a means through which it is possible to begin understanding the aestheticization of violence as a legitimizing tool for regime violence undertaken in the name of 'security'.

Political instability in post-2003 Iraq is easy to detect even by a non-specialist observer. Nevertheless, why Iraq has become politically unstable is a question that has received controversial and sometimes contradictory responses. Partial ethnofederalism is the adopted political system in post-2003 Iraq which several scholars believe causes political instability and threatens the integrity of states. Accordingly, the charge is that ethnofederalism formalizes antagonistic minority identities and empowers them with institutional capabilities. By extension, identity formalization and institutional empowerment make the minorities move towards secession. Thus, the question addressed in this dissertation is to what extent partial ethnofederalism really can be held responsible for political instability in post-2003 Iraq? This dissertation defends partial ethnofederalism against its critics and argues that, far from being the root cause of political instability in Iraq, it has in fact ensured that instability has not turned into disintegration. Three defenses are paramount and constitute the bulk of my argument in support of ethnofederalism in Iraq. The first defense criticizes the critics’ method of approaching ethnofederalism in which they consider it as an independent variable (causing the disintegration of states) rather than a dependent variable (the outcome of ethnic elite negotiations). Considered as a dependent variable in post-2003 Iraq, ethnofederalism was the only viable option. They second defense investigates the history of Iraq and argues that whenever the central governments adopted an ethnic form of autonomy, political stability prevailed and, conversely, whenever the central government rescinded such autonomy arrangements political instability followed. The third defense originates from the question of: if ethnofederalism is not responsible for instability, then what can explain its existence in Iraq? To answer this query, an alternative explanation is offered. I argue that two other factors majorly contributed to the existing political instability in Iraq that are not ethnofederal in nature, namely insufficient legitimacy of the processes that led to re-establishment of the state and deficiencies found in both the processes and structures of some state institutions.

This thesis presents the analysis of a case study on political corruption in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The focus is on the democratic transition between 2003 and 2013 addressing three zones. The first area is associated with the ways the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) carries out public recruitment processes and allocates exceptional pensions. The second is about the ways in which media outlets are financed, and how this affects the position of the press in the fight against corruption. The final case is related to how political parties finance their activities, and how this process is linked to political corruption. The objectives of this study are to identify the traits and extent of political corruption, to determine potential reasons for the growing opportunities for it, and to provide possible recommendations to minimise corruption incentives. The central argument of this thesis is that the two dominant ruling parties benefited from their positions, managed to abuse government positions and to appropriate public wealth to serve their own ends in a critical transitional period. This analysis essentially relies on primary data gathered from face-to-face interviews conducted with relevant elites and from official documents. The findings of this analysis suggest that the KRG has applied informal procedures to exclusively recruit members of the ruling parties to its institutions, offering them public positions and allocating them exceptional pensions. It is also argued here that both parties have established a substantial number of partisan and semi-partisan press networks, funded by the KRG, to deliver their political sentiments and attack their opponents. This thesis further asserts that the ruling parties abused two core sources of party funding, namely public subsidies and private financial resources, to strengthen their domination and challenge any political party that sought to unseat them. These conditions have laid the grounds for the emergence of different forms of political corruption, including party patronage, clientelism and state capture, which have together created a vicious circle. Faced with these findings, this thesis finally proposes some policy recommendations to strengthen public institutions and reduce opportunities for political corruption.

The dissensus over Iraq on both international and national levels offers a rich setting for a cross-national research to test some assumptions about media-foreign policy relationship originating mainly from American political communication literature. This line of research suggests that the government policy line and national elite opinion (consensus/dissensus) are the most important factors in explaining how the media cover international politics. This study focuses on three European states which adopted different policies with regard to Iraq: Finland (anti-war), Ireland (neutral) and the UK (pro-war). The study employs both quantitative and qualitative content analysis in order to determine the range of sources, selection of topics and the tone of the press coverage of the Iraq crisis and controversial national Iraq policies. Data consist of two daily quality newspapers from each country from different ends of the political spectrum. However, in the absence of another national daily, a regional quality newspaper and the biggest national tabloid newspaper were included from Finland. Main periods of analysis cover four weeks at critical phases of the crisis between February and May 2003. The analysis indicated that governments' foreign policy line did not explain the differences in press coverage very well. In the case of Finland, opinion items were sympathetic to anti-war views but news articles often reproduced the US/UK case for war. Meanwhile, the national political elite had little interest in engaging into a public debate on such issues as US motivations, the war's legal repercussions or potential consequences for the fragile Middle Eastern security system. With national elite unwilling to publicly challenge the US/UK claims, the Finnish press coverage did not stand out as particularly critical of the invasion although the US claims did not go uncontested in the Finnish newspapers either. In Ireland and the UK, clear differences between newspapers operating in the same political system indicated that government policy was not the most significant factor in explaining how the press covered the Iraq crisis. In both countries, the elites were divided over the issue of Iraq and the newspapers reflected these divisions. The Independent and the Irish Times were more sympathetic to the political opposition's anti-war views than the Daily Telegraph and the Irish Independent. The Telegraph was the most consistent in its support for the war but the analysis also indicated that in the post-war situation the press coverage became less uniform both within the newspapers and countries. Overall, the opinions were much more polarised than in the Finnish newspapers clearly indicating that the elite dissensus had brought the Iraq policy in 'the sphere of legitimate controversy'.

When Tony Blair took Britain to war in Iraq in 2003, he overruled vociferous opposition from both the wider public and members of his own governing party. Public opinion was exercised by the issue on a vast scale. Over one million marched in London against the war. Opinion polls uniformly showed majority opposition to the use of force. Newspapers, the engine of media debate in this country, mostly attacked the government line, and encouraged their readers to protest or even, in one case, to rebel. The story of Iraq, however, is not simply one of an ideological or misguided premier dragging the entire nation to battle against its will. It is not simply one of ‘spin’, dossiers, Alastair Campbell, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Much of the debate, and much of the hostility it generated, focused on areas that foreign policy analysts would consider peripheral; the domestic political consequences of war, the role of ‘spin doctors’ in the assessment of intelligence, and the question of whether the Prime Minister’s (successful) efforts to build a strong alliance with the world’s last superpower had transformed him into the President’s ‘poodle’. Interactions between ministers and the media were conditioned on both sides by an intimidating array of structural pressures. Diplomatic and journalistic calculations often clashed, trapping the government in the middle of an immensely complex ‘multi-level game’. News management influenced substantive foreign policy just as policy influenced news management, and the media arguably affected both, albeit often indirectly. The substance and the communication of the decision to go to war proved to be inseparable, both in the course of decision-making, and in their later retrospective assessment. Public Opinion, broadly defined, had a significant impact on British foreign policy at this time. Crucially, however, this impact operated through political communication mechanisms usually ignored by FPA.

During the years from 2006-2009 and 2009-2013, both Iraq and then Afghanistan were under extreme duress, succumbing to the pressures from violent armed non-state groups. This occurred while both cases were already under US occupation. In order to resolve the growing instabilities posed by these non-state groups, the US escalated its initial military efforts first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. The escalation of military efforts was conceived as a “Surge” strategy. The Iraq Surge was implemented first, starting in 2006. By 2009, the situation in Iraq dramatically changed because there was a significant reduction in the direct violence experienced by Iraqis. Furthermore, the new Iraq government gained political momentum and for a short period, it was able to centralize the states political authority and gain more legitimacy amongst the Iraqi people. Much of the conventional wisdom amongst policy experts and some academics is that the Iraq Surge worked, and the premise for this is the reduction of violence and the growing strength of the Iraqi government from 2006-2009. In light of the success in the Iraq Surge, another Surge was employed in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Surge started in late 2009 and carried on through 2012. The Afghanistan Surge was conceived using the same political plan, and the same military manuals and tactics deployed during the Iraq Surge. However, Afghanistan did not experience the same radical decline in direct violence that was seen in Iraq.

The increasing international concern about the consequences of warfare for civilian populations has led to a growing body of demographic and health research. This research has been essential in providing estimates of war-induced excess mortality, a primary indicator by which to assess the intensity of wars and the adequacy of humanitarian responses. Far less attention has been paid to war-induced changes in fertility and population health, and the limited existing literature has rarely adopted a longitudinal approach. This is especially evident in the case of the 2003–2011 war in Iraq. Several studies have sought to quantify excess mortality, whereas other demographic and health effects of this war have been largely overlooked. This thesis fills substantive knowledge gaps using longitudinal data from the 2000, 2006 and 2011 Iraq Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (I-MICS). The data collected during wartime are found to be of similarly good quality as those collected during peacetime. The analysis shows that, besides causing a heavy death toll, the Iraq war also had profound long-term consequences for women and newborns. It provides the first evidence on the effect of the war on early marriage and adolescent fertility, with implications for women’s empowerment and reproductive health. It is also the first to quantify the effect of the war on neonatal polio immunisation coverage, with relevance for the recent polio outbreak. It finally assesses the main challenges to Iraq’s health sector rehabilitation efforts, namely the ongoing insecurity and persistently high rate of population growth. Overall, the findings have important documentation functions for the international community and serve as inputs for the design of humanitarian relief strategies in Iraq and similar war-torn countries, such as neighbouring Syria.

This thesis examines the American policy of ‘dual containment’: the assumption by the US of a predominant role in the security system of the Persian Gulf in the 1990s, necessitating the simultaneous ‘containment’ of both Iran and Iraq. American policy towards Iran receives special attention thanks to its more unusual aspects, including the vehemence of American attempts to isolate it. While other scholars have sought to explore the empirical aspects of this policy, this thesis seeks to place it within an overarching theoretical framework derived from neoclassical realism (NCR). Additionally, the thesis integrates insights drawn from Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) to explain the impact of domestic variables on the formation of American policy towards Iran and Iraq during this era. In terms of domestic factors, the thesis identifies three key ‘intervening variables’ and their role in the adoption and evolution of dual containment: perceptions of threat on the part of policymakers, domestic political structures, and the operation of policy coalitions. In terms of the external, the role of the idiosyncratic ‘tripolar’ dynamics of the Persian Gulf region in shaping American policy is examined, as is the longstanding American interest in the Persian Gulf as an area of important national interest and key importance in the global economy, which endured into the 1990s despite the end of the Cold War. The thesis concludes that US policy towards Iran and Iraq was shaped by the intervening variables it identifies and examines. It strongly reflected the perceptions held by American policymakers of American power, and also of Iran and Iraq as ‘rogue’ or ‘outlaw’ states, and the measures perceived as necessary to advance Arab-Israeli peace. Moreover, it also reflected the influence of domestic interest groups and Congressional activism in the realm of foreign policy.

Since the regime was brought down by coalition forces in 2003, Iraq has been undergoing the process of democratisation through some significant political changes, namely, relatively free and competitive elections, and the freedom to form political and civil organisations. However, it faced crucial challenges that undermined this process such as ethno-sectarian violence/conflict. This thesis examines the impact of ethnic and sectarian conflict on the failure of the power sharing democracy. The thesis covers the period from 2003 until April 2014. The main themes that the thesis analyses are societal security/ethnic and sectarian violence, ethnic and sectarian inclusion, proportionality, and power devolution/federalism. For the purposes of the thesis, the societal security dilemma (SSD) theory, which focuses mainly on the roles of elites and external actors in societies that experience a power vacuum or institutional collapse in divided societies, is adopted. This theory is used for two purposes: firstly, to examine why and how the ethno-sectarian behaviour of elites affects societal security and the failure to establish a stable democracy; and secondly, to examine the viability of consociational design for the Iraqi case with the existence of distrust, fear and uncertainty among identity groups. The thesis argues that, due to fear, distrust and grievance among groups, the implementation of ethnic regions that draw lines between groups and localise the armed and security forces under a locally elected government is one of the mechanisms for reducing identity based violence and ensuring an effective power sharing democracy.

This dissertation examines the relations between the local base of the anti-Iraq War movement and the local press in the UK. It is, as such, a study of the interactions between local newsworkers and local activists, as well as a Content Analysis study of how the Iraq crisis, and particularly opposition to military action, was reported on in the pages of the local press. Key questions to be addressed include how local journalists assessed the legitimacy of the antiwar movement; how, and the reasons why, opponents of the war sought local press coverage, and with what consequences (if any) their interactions with the media may have had for the movement; and how the local press handled the almost uniquely controversial nature of the Iraq crisis in its reporting. Most previous research on the Iraq crisis has focused on the national media local media has hitherto been absent from the research agenda. Likewise, the majority of research on social movements has usually focused on the national leaderships of those movements again the local dimension of social movements has rarely been studied. In these ways it is hoped that the study makes a unique contribution to research into both the reporting of the Iraq crisis, and to the study of the interactions between social movements and the media.