Infrastructure, Revenue, and Services: Non-State Governance in Iraq’s Disputed Territories

Abstract

While states and non-state armed groups often engage in militarised conflict over contested territory, at other times they co-govern in a tenuous equilibrium. Using a survey of over 1,600 Kurdish soldiers (Peshmerga) and elite interviews, we investigate local variation in shared governance in one such context – the disputed territories of northern Iraq. Despite the area being under Kurdish military control, the Iraqi government continued to provide services in districts where it had pre-existing infrastructural capacity. However, in revenue-producing districts, Kurdish actors appropriated infrastructural power to provide services themselves. This illustrates that non-state governance strategies, and their outputs, can vary locally.