This past decade, an important body of scholarship on Iraq and the Middle East have foregrounded sectarian identities and dynamics, often focusing on the period following the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. From the "Shi'a revival" to the rise of ISIS, many scholars have explored the sectarian dimensions structuring of the post-2003 context, as well as the importance of identity politics. This panel argues that there is a need to explore contemporary and recent Iraqi social, economic and political realities beyond communal and identity-based categories such as sect, ethnicity and religion. Similarly, while the context following the invasion and occupation of Iraq is clearly characterized by the institutionalization of communalism -sectarianism, ethnic and religious divisions through the muhasasa system - by the US-led administration and the new Iraqi elite, this panel proposes to take a wider historical perspective. It is a transdisciplinary panel that aims to explore aspects of Iraqi social, religious, economic and political realities of the recent period from complex, multilayered and wide historical perspectives. The panel particularly examines current military conflicts, the Iraqi state and regime -the muhasasa system and electoral politics-, political, religious and social movements. The first paper examines the effects of de-Baathification commission on Iraq's post 2003 governing trajectory. It argues that the comprehensive purging of Baathists and the institutionalization of the de-Baathification created a legal and structural mechanism for excluding targeted segments of the Iraqi population. The second paper argues that the politics of sect are no longer the chief driver of political instability or of political contestation in Iraq, a product of exceptional circumstances that are unlikely to be recreated. It analyzes the shifts in the muhasasa system, electoral politics, the parameters of populist discourse and the normalization of political Shiism. The third paper explores the participation of Shi'a clerics in parliamentary elections in post-2003 Iraq and analyzes their relationship to the state, political power and religious institutions. The final paper focuses on the context following the Islamic State invasion of 2014 characterized on the one hand by the "militia-zation" of the Iraqi regime and on the other hand by the strengthening of movements of civil society protests. It argues that these polarized social and political phenomena, need to be analyzed in looking at neoliberal economic politics, the political economy of war and militarization and the "toxicity of everyday life".