Maliki’s tools for maintaining power

Ten years after the US-led invasion, Iraq looks more like it did under Saddam Hussein than the incarnation of Washington’s neo-conservative dream. Launching his book Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism in London on 21 January, London School of Economics academic Toby Dodge made a comparison between Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “shaping of the electoral territory”.