Talk:Democracy in Iraq/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Goldsztajn (talk · contribs) 22:08, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi @FormalDude - Looking through the article I came to the conclusion that I see this as a quickfail for multiple issues, but mostly because it does not cover the topic properly and suffers from SYNTH issues (especially the conflation of protest with democracy). However, I've requested a second opinion to confirm (or contest) my assessment.

I think the overall problem is that the article is not clear on what it is trying to address. The first part of the article discusses the history of Iraq without any reference to democracy or democratic movements. The 2011 and 2019 protests sections are not discussions of democracy but descriptions of events. Protests are not intrinsic to democracy, nor are many of the examples presented clearly democratic: eg "the protestors' key demands (improved governance, public services, and job prospects)" ... all those elements are not intrinsiclly related to democracy and could be addressed in conditions unrelated to democracy. The only section which is overtly about (formal) democracy is the measures of democracy section.

In order to address this topic properly to achieve a GA, it's necessary for far more extensive engagement with the generalist and specialist literature that discusses the history, origins and theories of Iraq's democracy and its democratic movements.

Regards,--Goldsztajn (talk) 22:08, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Responding to the 30 request, I broadly agree with the above. Another concern for me is the highlighting of Freedom House, which ranks "freedom" rather than democracy. It would be more useful to compare a few different indices that rank democracy specifically, such as V-Dem, the Economist's ranking, etc. Alternately, if it could be directly supported by a reliable source a statement like "Political scientists generally do not consider Iraq a democracy as of [date]" could also be used.
 * Additionally, I checked the statement, "The country's populace has become increasingly more averse to the idea of liberal democracy" and could not find it in the source. I believe that such a potentially controversial claim needs a better source than Freedom House, which does not specialize on investigating public opinion. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  23:08, 1 November 2022 (UTC)