Whilst it is impossible to deny that Ba’ath ideology left an imprint on Iraqi state and society that lasts to the present day, it can be asked whether it was more ideology or political practice as shaped by the social backgrounds and political careers of the Ba’ath elite that accounts for this legacy. It can be argued that the ideological framework that the previous regime ostensibly rested on has been far less relevant in shaping the new Iraq than the forms in which the Ba’ath exercised power. To take but one example, whether centralization is a legacy of Ba’ath ideology or Ba’ath practice independent of ideology is open to debate. Less ambiguous is the legacy of nepotism, corruption, zero-sum politics and the politics of personalities that predates the Ba’ath and continues to the present. Nevertheless, the Ba’ath’s ideological imprint has undeniably left Iraqi society with a vocabulary and charged symbolism that is specifically related to ideology (even if that ideology was seldom mirrored in practice). The most obvious example would be the associations relating to ‘Arabism’ and the assumed implications of Arab identity. Furthermore, the relevance and legacy of Ba’ath ideology in such cases is equally apparent in both attachment and rejection: in some instances, the relevance of Ba’ath ideology is evident by the popular backlash amongst some against the assumed Ba’ath position on a given issue. Similarly, there are many documented instances of unlikely imitators of Ba’athi rhetoric who do so as a form of opposition to the current ruling elite. Few examples are more striking in that regard than an Iraqi Salafi preacher employing Ba’athi idioms intermeshed with standard Salafi anti-Shi’a discourse. This presentation will discuss the difficulties in identifying the Ba’ath’s legacy (in terms of both ideology and practice) in current Iraqi political discourse, practice and outlook.