The graph above depicts two things:
1) Patriotism among Iraqi ethnic groups is quite high, and, among Kurds, has been increasing. Patriotism is measured by this question: “How proud are you to be an Iraqi: very proud, quite proud, not very proud, or not at all proud?” The graph presents the percentage who are very or somewhat proud.
2) Identification as an Iraqi has also increased sharply, particularly among both Sunnis and Shi’is. National identity is measured with this question: “Which of the following best describes you: ‘above all, I am an Iraqi’; ‘above all, I am a Muslim’; ‘above all, I am an Arab’; or ‘above all, I am a Kurd’?” The graph presents the percentage who say “above all, I am Iraqi.”
The question is: why has Iraqi patriotism increased? The originator of these data, Mansoor Moaddel, along with Mark Tessler and Ronald Inglehart, have one answer. In a new piece (gated), they argue that foreign occupation tends to breed patriotism. Analyzing the December 2004 survey in particular, they find that individuals who with harsher views of foreign Islamic militants are more patriotic; this is true among Sunnis, Shi’is, and Kurds. They find that Sunnis and Kurds who oppose the coalition forces are also more patriotic. This isn’t the case among Shi’is; Moaddel et al. attribute this to the invasion’s “free[ing] the Shi’is from the despotism of the former regime and pav[ing] for their political ascendance.” Instead, Shi’is who oppose American values are more patriotic (although the relationship is weak).
Then, Moaddel and colleagues present data from the complete set of surveys from 2004-2007, which I depict above. They view the increases over time as additional suggestive evidence that foreign occupation creates patriotism.
Another explanation revolves around domestic politics more than foreign occupation. Zach Elkins and I offer such an explanation in this working paper. (This paper is not focused on Iraq but uses these same data in service of another argument; the graph above comes from our paper). We write:
The sectarian conflicts that are promulgated by certain group leaders and their followers may actually be pushing rank-and-file members of each sect away from an exclusive ethnic or religious identity and toward a common identity. As New Yorker correspondent George Packer noted in September 2007, after citing these same survey findings, “Civil war and sectarian rule have tarnished the prestige of religious parties and increased the appeal of a nonsectarian government.”
Ultimately, our explanation is more speculative than that of Moaddel and colleagues because we lack data on Iraqi feelings toward various elite political parties and actors. But it strikes me as plausible.
I welcome other thoughts in the comments.
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Nice graph. I’d bound the y-axis at 0 and 100% (currently it goes beyond these limits), also I’d put the year labels between the hash marks rather than on them (think about it: on this scale, 1995 is a time period, not a single point), also I’d put percent signs on the y-axis (e.g., “25%” rather than “25″) for some useful redundancy. But other than these minor comments, I think the graphs are beautiful.
The year-labeling issue is not completely trivial, especially when trying to interpret when the series ends.
John—this is a great topic; thanks for the post. I find the graph on ‘identification as Iraqi’ very interesting, particularly the large jump around the beginning quarter of 2006, which appears to be when we really see ‘identification as Iraqi’ take off. I pulled up the Brookings Iraq Index and found some interesting possible connections that might be worth thinking about. For example, if you look at the Iraq Index graph on “estimated number of Iraqi civilian fatalities by month” it appears that starting in January 2006, the number of civilian fatalities charged upward significantly and stayed high until January 2007, when it starts declining. There are some significant short jumps prior to January 2006, but none of them are sustained to the extent they are in 2006. Perhaps this escalation in civilian casualties (and the fear it likely instilled in Iraqi communities) triggered an increased in the sense of patriotism (one note: even though the number of casualties drops in 2007 and patriotism remains high, this does not necessarily undermine the potential of this thesis; perhaps civilian deaths gave a boost to patriotism initially and the practice of patriotism itself has some kind of inherent staying power, or ‘stickiness,’ so that even when the deaths stop, it remains. The civilian deaths therefore may have been an initial prompt of patriotism, but cannot explain patriotism’s longevity.) Another interesting graph to compare the ‘identification as Iraqi’ graph with is the Iraq Index graph on “enemy-initiated attacks against the coalition and its partners.” Again, we see a major spike in violence beginning around January 2006—when we see the spike in Iraqi patriotism. Perhaps the spike in patriotism led to the spike in attacks against coalition troops, or, even more interestingly, vice versa. Either way, there is a possible connection here.
It is also interesting to note that a significant amount of the population believed in 2006 that the US presence was provoking the violence. The presence of foreign troops may therefore have played a role in the increase in patriotism, although indirectly. Ultimately while foreign troops may be perceived as the cause of the increase in violence, it is the increase in violence itself that may have directly caused the increase in patriotism.
Furthermore, I wonder what the impact of this increased patriotism is on Iraqi politics. I find it interesting that Iraqi patriotism has not translated into support for disbanding militias (a key impediment to unified political stability), which makes me wonder how exactly the people in this survey would define “Iraqi” (and whether that might have some bearing on how to explain this increase). Hope these points weren’t already mentioned in the papers…
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