Iraq War

The Iraq War provoked a lively theoretical debate among American political scientists. Some optimists (derided as “neoconservatives”) claimed that democracy could be implanted just about anywhere, including in Iraq, if the right procedures were followed. If Iraqi democracy did not work as planned, it was due to U.S. mistakes. Facing them were scholars dubbed “realists” or “modernization theorists,” who argued that Iraqi society, still largely poor, uneducated, and fragmented, was far from ready for democracy and that it would likely fail. We might have saved a lot of trouble if we had thought this debate out in advance of the 2003 war. Theories can be highly relevant to current policy.