Iraqi society, as a collective society or even just an electorate, is difficult to characterize. Iraqi voters seem not to be issue-driven. Instead, they have tended to follow the decisions of clerics, tribal leaders and political leaders since 2003, when more than three decades of Baath dictatorship ended. Iraqi society participated in elections on Jan. 30, 2005, for the first time in history. The Iraqis voted for an interim Iraqi parliament, without any precedent to guide them in their political participation as they redrew the political map of the country.
The result was that the various entities in Iraq clung to their collective identities, leading to chauvinistic, sectarian and tribal divisions within the country. The Kurds and the Arabs voted for lists that represented their nationalism, and within each of those two main nationalist identities, the Shiites and Sunnis voted for candidates from their own sects. Within each sect, the tribal behavior of the Iraqi voter became apparent.
