Saddam Hussein’s Iraq shared many of its worst features with the Soviet empire, combining institutionalized political tyranny and the distortions of a dysfunctional, command economy. Consequently, in the aftermath of Saddam’s removal from power, many of the same problems and dilemmas that beset post-Communist Europe during the 1990s—ethnic tensions, economic instability, weak civil society, a lack of individual responsibility, and cultural impoverishment—can be found in Iraq today.

How is it possible to create democratic politics in countries where civil society has been made all but extinct by terror, fear, and corruption? How can state institutions and government workers complicit, to varying degrees, in the depredations of the old regime be rehabilitated? How should the new government foster the development of independent private enterprise within a rule-based marketplace and facilitate the transformation of the individual citizen, accustomed to the paternalism of an all-powerful state bureaucracy, into a person ready to assume a greater share of responsibility for his personal welfare and prosperity? How should the crimes and horrors inflicted by the old regime be documented and the citizenry educated about their nation’s repressive past?

These and other questions will be the topic of an AEI conference that brings together political leaders and intellectuals from the United States, Iraq, and former Warsaw Bloc nations to explore comparative experiences in reclaiming battered, post-totalitarian societies and guiding them toward freedom, stability, and liberal capitalism.