This is the third in a series of thought pieces exploring how human rights can be studied both formally, through the use of abstract models, or empirically through large-N statistical models.
The general associations of the realization of human rights and cultural homogeneity is support by both the empirical record and the related literature using field laboratory experiments. Given this observation, a natural extension may be that the opportunity to self-govern within an ethnically homogenous sub-community of a larger heterogenous group would be welcome. That is, an ethnically heterogeneous group may rather govern within their in-group than allow members from the out-groups to govern the whole polity; as the former may maximize the realization of human rights within every group. It was precisely this mechanism that motivated the separation of the former Yugoslavian republic into several new states, each representing a different ethnic sub-group. We might expect; therefore, that in situations where the level of human rights is divergent among an ethnically heterogenous group, when given the chance (e.g., the Yugoslavia example) these groups would always choose to self-govern.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in late 2005 an interim government was established with the primary charge of developing a new governing framework for the country. This process sparked an international debate on what form of government would be best suited for establishing democracy and peace within the war torn country. Then Senator Joe Biden was the primary proponent of a federalist plan for Iraq, whereby the country would have be divided into three federal states, roughly reflective of the country’s ethnic and religious cleavages. Specifically, this would have included a Kurdish state in the north, a Shiite in the west, and a Sunni in the central-east. Under the Hussein regime, the Sunni minority had much of the power, and often perpetrated sever human rights abuse against the Shiite majority and the Kurds.
Given this history, and the opportunity presented by the removal of the Hussein regime, it follows that the plan proposed by Senator Biden would have been welcome. What followed; however, was quite the contrary. The plan was rejected by both the international community and the Iraqi people, both of whom sought to establish a strong central government in Baghdad with a proportional legislative body made up of district representatives. The question is then; given the strong evidence of a link between cultural homogeneity and human rights, why a people subject to human rights abuses for so long would not choose to self-govern?
The Iraqi example is very pertinent because it provides several possible explanations. First, Iraq is a country rich in oil; however, that resources is not evenly distributed throughout the country (most of the oil is located in the northern, heavily Kurdish region). As such, one might naturally posit that the benefits derived from managing and profiting such a resource trump an interest in self-governance and human rights. Second, under the Hussein regime the minority ruled—and abused—the majority. Given this dynamic, a sudden opportunity to seize all power for the majority may have been the countervailing mechanism that moved the Shiite majority to promote plan of unification. Finally, the influence of foreign powers; particularly the United States and Great Britain, played a vital role in Iraq’s transition to democracy. In this case one might instead hypothesize that in the absence of this strong exogenous influence, the Iraq may have independently settled on a federalist government.
All are possible, and it is likely that in the case of Iraq a combination of these mechanisms were at play. Of these; however, the resource mechanism may be most interesting for the purposes of studying and promoting human rights. To explore this mechanism further, I will propose an extension of the repeated dictator game to fit roughly the situation in Iraq. Suppose there are three players, each representing a different ethnic group. Each player holds some amount of resource 
The motivation for the game is that if all players coordinate on a even a tiny proportional offer they will be made much better off over the long run, but (as is often the case in these Prisoner’s Dilemma-style coordination games), each play is individually motivated to defect on the others and thus there is no coordination, and the game ends after the first round. This can be interpreted as a stylization of the three ethnic groups in Iraq and their failure to coordinate on self-governance because of the self-interest that oil injects into the decision process. Though the Kurds in Iraq have stated for many years their desire to govern themselves, they have never been willing to accept an framework for sharing the profits from oil with the rest of the country. The Biden plan for a federalist government structure in Iraq would have acted as an institution for the players in the above game to coordinate on; however, this plan was rejected and at present the current Iraq government has not settled either the issues of oil production or human rights realizations.
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There’s no doubt that resource issues have bedeviled Iraqi constitutional development. However, equally important are issues of minority status versus potential majoritarianism, the effective veto (or control power) that this provides each actor, and the ways in which each actor is asymmetrically positioned.
Iraqi Shiites represent 60% of the population–which gives them effective control of much of the central state apparatus. Given this, one wonders what advantage accrues to them through federal power-sharing. (In fact, one Shi’ite party, ISCI, did favour a degree of federalism–largely for reasons of comparative advantage in regional elections over other Shi’ite rivals). The predominately Shi’a south also controls roughly half or more of known Iraqi oil resources. . The Biden plan, in effect, proposed to dilute Shiite political and resource assets with few offsetting gains.
Iraqi Sunnis are only 20% of the population, and control little oil–hence federalism is unattractive unless they secure a share of resources held elsewhere in the country.
Iraqi Kurds comprise another 20%, and have oil resources (as you note). While they are a minority in national politics, they have de facto political and military control of Kurdish areas regardless of the central government. Given that they’re already achieved a degree of federalism, both de facto and in the provisions of the constitution that provide for regional self-government, the Biden plan really offered little change from the status quo.
How would your formal modeling of the federalism issue change if you introduced these asymmetries?
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