Insecure leaders: how elite infighting may facilitate the end of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region

The stability of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) continues to deteriorate due to the power struggle between the region’s two ruling parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). While they have refused to compromise and collaborate in the interest of the KRI and its citizens, the leaders of both parties have primarily relied on opportunistic tactics to weaken each other and secure short-term gains. This study attributes the sources of the ongoing PUK-KDP rivalry to leadership insecurity. Rooted in the region’s predatory system of rule, this insecurity has recently deepened due to economic and political factors, generating greater divisions between the two parties to the detriment of Kurdistan’s survival. Renewed power-sharing arrangements between the ruling parties without steps toward transforming the region’s predatory system into a democratic one will likely fail to produce long-lasting stability in the KRI.