The Political Economy of Development in Post-Saddam Iraq: Political Turn or Reproduction of Limited Access Order

The collapse of the Baath regime and the decline of the established political order, as a critical historical moment, presented the opportunity for transformation and the development of mechanisms to realize desirable economic-social changes in front of the Iraqi society and political system. However, the realities of this country indicate that the situation of Iraq's national development has become more complicated in the post-Saddam period. The problem of the current research is to decipher how the current fate was formed and the logic governing the pattern of stagnation and fragility of the economic development process in post-Saddam Iraq. The main question of the article is how to understand the expansion of the development process in post-Saddam Iraq? The hypothesis of the research is designed in such a way that the struggle of powerful social forces present in the political sphere of  post-Saddam Iraq has hindered the necessary institutional turn to transition from the state of limited access order and achieve dynamic national development in this country. The findings of the research show that the mutual actions of the forces present in the policy-making sphere of the political economy of post-Saddam Iraq have not taken steps to prepare a disciplined ideological and institutional formulation to open the historical locks and guide the economic development in this country. On the other hand, the historical situation after the fall of Saddam has been associated with the reproduction of the past Institutional heritage, the intensification of rent-seeking, the expansion of personal relationships, and finally, the inequality in the distribution of incomes, the increase in exchange costs and the development of a fragile order in this country. The research has been carried out by Historical research method and relying on library sources and texts.