“The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq” collects expert contributions on the consequences of the overthrow of Saddam’s regime for the Kurds and the other peoples of Kurdistan.

This volume is the first in any language to address in detail the constitutional politics of Kurdistan’s relations with the rest of Iraq, and Kurdistan’s future constitutional options.

The essays evaluate how the relations between Kurdistan and predominantly Arab Iraq might—and should—be remade in a state marred by the legacies of genocide, ethnic expulsion, and coercive assimilation.

The volume includes contributions from political scientists, constitutional lawyers, regional experts and Kurdistan’s international constitutional advisory team and opens with a historical overview.

Essays on past failures for Kurdistan’s autonomy, on Kurdish hopes and fears before the March 19 war, on Kurdistan’s internal divisions and on its external relations with Turkey give needed historical background to the debates.

Contemporary pieces appraise mistakes made in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and analyze what Kurdistan’s negotiators seek to have inserted in the negotiation of the Transitional Administrative Law and will want in any permanent constitution of Iraq.

Contributors are: Ofra Bengio, Karna Eklund, Peter W. Galbraith, Michael M. Gunter, John McGarry, Molly McNulty, Brendan O’Leary, Khaled Salih, Gareth Stansfield, Karin von Hippel, Sophia Wanche, Paul R. Williams.

Brendan O’Leary is Penn’s Lauder Professor of Political Science and Director of the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict. He is the author, coauthor or coeditor of 14 books, including “Right-Sizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders.” He served in Kurdistan as a constitutional advisor to the Kurdistan National Assembly and Regional Government during 2004.

—University of Pennsylvania Press