Marja iyya and politics in Iraq: With an emphasis on Ayatollah Sistani's thoughts

The present paper is a study of the role of Marja’iyya in political developments in today’s Iraq and its interaction with the socio-political structures in the country. The writer considers Marja’iyya as an influential factor and a dynamic actor in history of Iraq’s political life and studies the phenomenon based on structure-agency framework. In addition, using critical realism to analyze Iraq’s political development and the relationship among the agent, Marjas, and Iraq’s internal and foreign relationships gives us a dynamic understanding and does not allow us to prioritize one of the two factors of structure or agency over the other in this dialectical relationship. The collapse of the Ba’ath regime in 2003 provided the opportunity for the Shiites to take over power due to their population majority, despite their deprivation from participation during the Ba’ath party’s ruling. As a result of the Shiites’ taking over political power, Marjas such as Ayatollah Sistani gained more power.