The state, sovereignty and strategic decision-making

Legitimacy and trust: why does force need institutional acceptance?

By Ali Zuweid · Article date: 29 October 2026 · 9 min read

English translation published 31 October 2026. Read the Arabic original.

In trust-survey results published in June 2026, the OECD reported that 40% of respondents across participating OECD member countries had high or moderately high trust in national government, against 43% with low or no trust. The data were collected in 2025 and do not include Iraq. Their relevance is not that Iraq should import the percentage, but that relatively established institutions still need to examine public acceptance. The findings also report higher trust in police and courts than in national government in most participating countries. OECD: 2026 trust-survey results.

This difference requires distinguishing government from institution, and approval of a decision from recognising the competent body’s right to make it lawfully. A citizen may oppose a government policy while confidently turning to a court to challenge it. Conversely, someone may support a popular decision without trusting that the procedure will remain fair when the beneficiary changes. For Iraq, this becomes a security issue when it affects people’s willingness to use public institutions, the cost of implementing decisions and the state’s capacity to endure political disagreement or social pressure.

Legitimacy cannot be reduced to applause

Article 5 of Iraq’s Constitution makes the people the source of authority and legitimacy, exercised through elections and constitutional institutions. This does not equate momentary approval with the legitimacy of every measure, nor does it exempt an elected authority from rules. Elections provide a route to acquiring authority, while its exercise remains constrained by competences, rights and procedures. Measuring trust therefore does not replace constitutional legitimacy, just as invoking legitimacy does not remove the need to explain performance and hold it accountable. Confusing these levels permits either treating decisions as sacrosanct or denying legitimacy to every unpopular decision. Iraq’s Constitution, Article 5.

A trusted institution can make a decision costly to some people, explain its basis and allow it to be challenged. An institution dependent on immediate approval may instead postpone a necessary decision or apply it to a group that is easier to pressure. This is an analytical distinction between trust and support. Trust concerns expectations of rule-bound conduct even during disagreement; support may follow an immediate benefit or political preference. A security institution’s objective should consequently not be to maximise popularity by any means. Citizens should understand the limits of its authority and have an effective remedy when those limits are exceeded.

The cost of confusion becomes apparent when a complaint is treated as an assault on state prestige. A complaint may reveal an individual error, a defective procedure or an unrealistic expectation. That cannot be known before it is examined. Closing the route deprives the institution of information and pushes disputes into less verifiable channels. Receiving a complaint, however, does not mean accepting every allegation or condemning the official in advance. Professional practice protects complainants from retaliation and officials from unproven accusations through a process whose stages and responsible authority are known to both.

Force and acceptance serve different purposes

The British Home Office explains policing by consent through impartiality, public cooperation and limiting force to what is necessary. It clarifies that this means general public consent, not an individual right to opt out of the law. The distinction matters for Iraq because appeals to trust can mistakenly sound like a requirement to obtain everyone’s permission before enforcing a rule. General law remains binding, but its application can strengthen or weaken cooperation. These are declared principles, not proof that British policing follows them in every incident. Home Office: policing by consent.

The British example itself tests the limits of relying on principle alone. In March 2023, the independent Casey Review found institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia in the Metropolitan Police. This finding concerned a particular organisation at the report’s date; it does not describe every British police force or establish subsequent reform outcomes. It nevertheless shows that declared traditions of consent and impartiality do not prevent internal culture from deviating, and that an institution’s account of itself requires independent testing. Casey Review final report, 2023.

The lesson for Iraq is not to copy the British police’s organisational form or assume identical social problems. What can be transferred is the link between an institutional claim and a mechanism capable of examining it, even when the result is embarrassing. Oversight restricted to checking that written instructions exist may leave contrary practices intact behind them. Review must examine what happens after a complaint is registered, whether witnesses face obstacles and whether the organisation learns from recurring patterns. It must also distinguish establishing a defect from measuring its prevalence. One incident cannot condemn everyone, but calling it individual cannot justify closing the inquiry.

Why good services alone are insufficient

The OECD findings associate trust with perceptions of decision quality, openness and integrity. This is a survey association, not an experiment proving that one intervention will increase Iraqi trust by a defined percentage. It suggests a hypothesis worth testing: a direct service may improve while people continue to regard major decisions as unfair. Opening a project or shortening a transaction should therefore not automatically be presented as evidence of broad institutional acceptance. Each institution has its own interactions with citizens, and each level of decision-making raises questions about distributing costs and benefits. OECD: trust drivers and the limits of causal interpretation.

For Iraq, this hypothesis suggests separating assessments of everyday treatment from assessments of policy fairness. A person visiting an office may report respectful treatment while objecting to an eligibility rule that excludes them. Another may accept the rule but experience humiliation during its application. Combining both responses into a single satisfaction question loses the possibility of a targeted remedy. Nor is a growing number of satisfied users sufficient if the most adversely affected have stopped approaching the institution altogether. Research must include users and avoiders and their reasons, while protecting participants from any consequences for their applications.

Security institutions should not be charged with producing approval for every economic or social policy. Their role differs from government’s responsibility for resource allocation, even when protests over policy affect them. Article 9 of the Constitution affirms civilian leadership of the armed forces and excludes them from political affairs and the transfer of power. Turning them into defenders of an official’s popularity obscures that boundary. Professional separation protects their relationship with citizens from changing with every political cycle. This does not exempt civilian leadership from accountability; it clarifies who decides, who implements and what limits govern each. Constitution, Article 9.

Acceptance that can be tested

I propose that relevant Iraqi institutions begin with a narrow, declared review of citizens’ experience of repeated procedures rather than a national public-relations campaign. The procedure would be chosen according to the number affected and the potential impact on rights. Review would examine whether reasons are clear, expected duration is knowable, appeal is possible, staff conduct is appropriate and complaints reach an outcome. Information should be collected by a professionally independent body with suitable access powers, publishing aggregate findings without exposing individuals. The objective is to locate a correctable problem, not produce a promotional league table of institutions facing different burdens and risks.

If complaints rise after a safe reporting channel opens, performance has not necessarily deteriorated; the channel may have revealed what was concealed. If complaints fall, this may reflect improvement, fear or access difficulties. The indicator therefore needs to be read alongside resolution times, the quality of outcomes and the experiences of those who complained and those who refrained. Published figures require a short methodological explanation, not a ready-made defence of every result. Measurement earns credibility when the institution acknowledges interpretations that do not flatter its image.

Corrective action must change the actual relationship: giving reasons for a previously opaque decision, removing an unsupported requirement, protecting an official who rejected interference or referring a proven violation for accountability. Generic training disconnected from a specific defect may consume time without a testable effect. In my view, the first measure of success is whether an announced correction is implemented by a known date, followed by checking whether the problem recurs in the same form. This does not imply immediate public trust. Accumulated experience may require a sequence of consistent events before expectations change.

Force remains necessary to confront violence and protect rights; this analysis does not imply that dialogue can replace it in every situation. Its lawful use must nevertheless remain reviewable under law, and exceptional responses must not become permanent administration. Institutional acceptance does not require the state to surrender authority. It requires the limits and purposes of that authority to be understandable. When a measure fails to achieve its purpose or harms people outside its intended scope, acknowledging and correcting the error is part of competence, not a surrender of prestige.

International percentages offer Iraq neither a ready-made prescription nor a verdict on its citizens’ trust. They provide a reason to measure the relationship rather than assume it, and to distinguish the institution from its office-holder and obedience from belief in procedural fairness. Force that must repeatedly silence objections to implement a decision consumes the acceptance it needs to endure. An institution capable of hearing objections and correcting errors while enforcing law gives the state something harder to purchase than equipment: acceptance that remains possible even in disagreement.

Ali Zuweid — Researcher in strategic affairs and national security