Having passed up the opportunity of requesting a six-month extension, Iraq’s National Assembly is required to pass a draft constitution within a week or face dissolution and new elections.  Iraq’s current leaders, as well as their American backers, have decided to make constitution writing the centerpiece of their efforts at political reconstruction, making the stakes particularly high.  In this analysis I will show:

• How much of the international analysis and lobbying distracts from the central issues and provided overly legalistic understandings of how the constitution would operate;
   
• Why the central purpose of the constitutional process—striking a bargain among Iraq’s various groups—is so difficult; and
   
• Why the drafters as well as external analysts should devote far more attention to practical issues of enforcement rather than general ideological language.

Click on the link to above for the full text of this Carnegie report.