With the advent of the Iraqi election on the horizon, this very moment of democracy falls short of its promise. Instead of being a moment of free will and individual agency which produces true representatives, it is a moment where people across Iraq are hailed into subject positions defined by sectarianism and clientelism, thereby reproducing the very same power structures which perpetuate their misery. This process of 'hailing' people into predefined roles is called interpellation, a term theorised by the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Interpellation, for Althusser, describes how ideology reproduces and maintains the dominance of the ruling class. It achieves this through the process of hailing. Ideology hails people into groups, making them subjects to the ideology of the ruling state apparatus.Hailing people into groups is operated through what Althusser termed the ideological state apparatus. Institutions like religion, the education system, the media, the family and the political system enact this process of interpellation. These institutions function by ideology, unlike the repressive state Apparatus like the army and the police, which functions by violence.

That being said, the ISA is leveraged to transform individuals into political subjects compliant with parties according to their agenda, be it sectarianism or clientelism, to maintain the very same structure pattern that keeps the nation fragile.The political system, structured by the post-2003 muhasasa (ethno-sectarian quota system), epitomises this. It is predicated on pigeonholing people into sectarian categories: Sunni, Shi'a, or Kurdish, and so forth. Campaign posters feature religious, tribal and ethnic symbols to spur people to vote rather than detailed policy platforms. Thus, citizens are hailed by the parties' propaganda to protect their share of power rather than selecting the righteous candidates into the right place. This procedure of manipulating the voters reproduces the very system that fragments the wounded nation.

Even beyond sectarian appeals, many other parties in Iraq run campaigns based on transactional promises: a job, a loan and paving the street to name but a few. As such, the national programmes are also absent. These offers interpellate citizens not as sovereign voters but as clients with narrow interests. The election becomes a moment to reaffirm one's place in the political party rather than a moment of collective democratic exercise. Thus, the election creates the illusion of choosing while in fact it is affirming the subjection to power brokers who orchestrate the system.

Althusser's theory equips us to recognise the manipulative strategies to stir people into giving their voices to the wrong candidates. It also provides a critical lens to recognise candidates who resist this logic and advance substantive policies aimed at addressing Iraq's pressing political, economic and social crises. Thus, only by resisting the interpellation of Iraqis into sectarian and clientelist subject positions, election is rendered as a real space of democracy rather than a mechanism of subjection.