Following the intervention in Iraq by Coalition forces in 2003, the Bush administration undertook an enormous and unprecedented project to bring the liberal model of democracy to Iraq. Driven by a top-down model of democratisation, the occupational authorities set about creating the formal institutions and mechanisms of a modern representative democracy. For example, they revitalised Iraq's judiciary, invested millions in reforming various arms of Iraq's sprawling bureaucracy and created various public oversight mechanisms that, in theory, would prevent the abuse of power. They also put in place an interim government that would go on to organise national elections. In 2005 these officials drafted the Iraqi constitution under US tutelage and paved the way for national elections and the subsequent appointment of a democratically elected government in 2006 (Isakhan 2012b). However, while the US went to great lengths to build the formal mechanisms and institutions of Iraq's new democracy, they both neglected and actively suppressed the local level of civil society that is so critical to the function and stability of democracy. To be effective and sustainable, democracy must be premised on much more than periodic elections, the rule of law, competition between parties and institutions which ensure effective oversight and accountability (Isakhan 2012a; Isakhan & Slaughter 2014; Isakhan & Stockwell 2011). Democracies must also rest on the negotiation of power between the state and civil society – defined here as the network of social and civic institutions that are distinct from the state and which represent, advocate for, and defend the rights and interests of the people (Keane 1998a, 1998b).

The Bush administration demonstrated a startling gap between rhetoric and action on the issue of democracy and civil society in Iraq. On the one hand it argued that the success of Iraq's democracy was central to its broader geopolitical agenda, and on the other it repeatedly tried to silence dissent, to limit democratic freedoms and to interfere in due process. In fact, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which governed Iraq on behalf of the US immediately after the 2003 invasion, was quick to nullify the results of a whole series of spontaneous local elections that sprang up across Iraq. Unfamiliar with such lively grass-roots democracy, the US outlawed these elections and the officials who had been elected by their own constituents were promptly replaced.