The Welfare State and Evaluation of the Process of Guaranteeing Survival in the Liberal Economy and Democratization (Case Study: Baath Party of Iraq)

The concept of the welfare state implies the realization of two main and important issues. The first is the government’s intervention, commitment and responsibility in providing the minimum living needs of citizens regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity and social class, and the second is the effort to realize democracy. At the beginning, this concept was noticed and welcomed by many countries of the world in such a way that many societies tried to implement the welfare state in their political system, but the fact is that some countries, such as Sweden, had a successful experience of realizing the welfare state, and others, such as Iraq During Saddam’s time, they did not succeed in this field. Therefore, the aim of the current research is to answer this main question: “How can we evaluate the process of realizing the welfare state in Iraq during the Saddam era, considering the dual indicators?” The hypothesis of the research implies that the Baath Party, despite its attention and desire for socialist foundations and the welfare state, implemented a completely different reading of this issue in the political-social system of Iraq in such a way that it had minimal success in providing the minimum life needs of the deprived Iraqi society. But not only was it not successful in the concept of democracy, but it turned into one of the most totalitarian political systems. The findings of the research, emphasizing the concept of political culture, the use of historical sociology methods and library sources, showed that the Baath Party, regarding the index of guaranteeing survival in a liberal economy centered on distributive justice And the transparency of financial resources has been an unsuccessful process and in relation to the effort to remove deprivation in Iraq, it has been a relatively successful process, but in the issue of democracy, due to the closed and submissive political culture of the Iraqi society, the process of rotation of power and the participation of political spectrums, and the process of monitoring and inspecting the performance of the rulers. It has been a completely unsuccessful process.

Keywords: Totalitarianism, Baath Party, Democracy, Welfare State, Iraq.

JEL Classification: B55, D60, E61.