A Passionate Parliament -- For Better or for Worse?

This past Wednesday, a brawl broke out during a session of Iraq’s Parliament dedicated to a discussion of the U.S.-Iraq security agreement. Ahmed Masu’udi reportedly instigated it, although other followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadre were soon actively contributing to the chaos.

Although Sadre’s followers make up a bloc of only 32 legislators in the 275-member Parliament, their possible alignment with, for instance, other anti-American blocs could lead to their overruling the other, perhaps calmer, voices within Parliament. This is precisely what the United States has attempted, since the creation of the Constitution, to--successfully--prevent. As a single-member plurality system, the United States has developed into a two-party system that is much more stable than a system ruled by factions who are, in the words of James Madison, “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

In a system free of these many competing blocs, or factions, it would have most likely been easier for the Iraqi government to reach a decision. Now only time will tell what the outcome of this disagreement about the security agreement will be.