Many political analyses depict Iraqi Kurdistan as a state in the making, a quasi-state, or a statelet steadily and inescapably on the march towards a well‑deserved independence.1 Generally, such studies focus on state-like institutions like, most importantly, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the regional parliament, and on state-related individuals like regional president Massoud Barzani and his spokespersons, as well as on their actions in the international arena. In doing so, however, they risk overlooking, on the one hand, internal divisions and tensions within the Kurdistan region that undermine its political effectiveness if not agency; and, on the other, external or trans-border political, economic, and military influences that belie the image of an (aspiring) sovereign territorial state. Moreover, it is difficult to distinguish these institutions of government in a meaningful way from the personalized rule of, for example, regional president Massoud Barzani, Prime minister Nechirwan Barzani, or leading PUK figures in Sulaimaniya region, like Hero Talabani, Kosrat Rasul, and Berhem Salih. Hence, it may be tempting to focus on the personalities, actions, and intentions of leaders; but this is as misleading as a focus on institutions: apart from introducing an elite bias and reproducing misleading stereotypes about Kurdistan as a quasi-tribal society, it also takes individuals as given rather than constituted in and by power relations. Certainly, many if not all of these leaders try to project an image of personal power, to establish a more hereditary form of rule, and/or to reward their loyal clients; hence, a focus on patronage relations rather than impersonal institutions might be more fruitful.2 Patronage relations, however, are generally characterized as illegitimate, informal, and non-institutionalized; but in Iraqi Kurdistan, they have become so pervasive and so deeply entrenched that one may ask to what extent dichotomies like formal-informal and institutional as opposed to personal can still be unproblematically applied here.[1]

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