Who are the Elite Groups in Iraq and How do they Exercise Power

Abstract

The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq transformed Iraq’s political settlement by ejecting the previous elites from power and by initiating state-building processes with previously marginalised elites and different governance principles. Iraq’s current day elites and institutions are the inheritors of that process. This review summarises the post-2003 processes that structure the nature of Iraqi politics today, it then explains how elites exercise power within these processes, and who those elites are.