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Occupied Iraq: Imperial Convergences?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

KERRY RITTICH Open the ORCID record for KERRY RITTICH [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

The occupation of Iraq in 2003 involved a wide-ranging set of interventions in the domestic legal, political and economic structures of the state, interventions that provoked a debate about whether the law of occupation should recognize a category of ‘transformative’ occupation.

While the occupation itself has often been decried as an imperial venture, its administration involved a diffusion of power among international institutions as well as ratification by the Security Council through Resolution 1483. This article pursues the intuition that the transformation of norms and practices elsewhere in the international order underwrote the idea that it was the law of occupation that was problematic, at the same time facilitating the transmutation and preservation of practices that might be identified as imperial. Two developments are key: The first is the pervasive normalization of intervention in the domestic policy and legal orders of states; the second is the dissemination of norms about domestic regulation within the international order, those that touch on economic governance in particular. The orders of the occupying were infused in both form and substance with ideas of ‘normal governance’ traceable to myriad projects, policies and practices of other international institutions: development agencies, financial institutions, trade organizations. Iraq then might be a revealing case with which to consider the character and locations of contemporary imperialism, as well as the role of international law and international institutions in its unfolding.

Keywords

economic reformgovernanceimperialisminternational institutionslaw of occupation
Type
INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY: Symposium on ‘Imperial Locations’
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 479 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2018 

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Footnotes

*

Professor of Law, Women and Gender Studies, and Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto [kerry.rittich@utoronto.ca]. Deep thanks to the other contributors to this volume, to two anonymous reviewers, and to Yishai Blank, Karen Engle, Guenter Frankenberg, Aeyal Gross, Vasuki Nesiah, Amr Shalakany, Chantal Thomas, Robert Wai, Lucie White, Mikhael Xifaras and the law faculties at Hong Kong University and Tel Aviv University for their comments, insights and assistance.

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