The governates have already been established. They are essentially the 18 provinces that predated the Constitution. Governorates of Iraq
Yes, as I said, a “region” (a collection of provinces) has these powers (a constitution), but not a governorate (province) and, as I noted above the articles involving the judiciary define it as a federal power and do not subrogate it to any other authority, other than to say that federal “law” (not the federal constitution) will establish the various courts and their jurisdictions
Below the 18 governorates, Iraq is divided into 111 districts (qadaa). There is currently only one region in existence - the Iraqi Kurdistan Region which was recognized as a region under article 113 of the constitution.
Under Iraq's Federalism law, new regions can be created from April 2008. Regions may be formed by one or more governorates. A request can be submitted by either two-thirds of the Governorate Council members or one tenth of the registered voters. Under Article 115, the request to become a region must be approved by majority vote in a governorate referendum. It is unlikely that requests to form regions will be submitted until the Iraqi Council of Representatives fulfills its obligation under Article 114 to define the executive procedures to form regions; which under Article 114 was to have been completed within six months of its first session on March 16, 2006.
Federalism Law
Article 114 of the constitution of Iraq provided that no new region may be created before the Iraqi National Assembly has passed a law which provides the procedures for forming the region. This law was passed in October 2006 after an agreement was reached with the Iraqi Accord Front to form the constitutional review committee and to defer implementation of the law for 18 months. Legislators from the Iraqi Accord Front, Sadrist Movement and Islamic Virtue Party all opposed the bill.
Under the Federalism Law a region can be created out of one or more existing governorates or two or more existing regions. A governorate can also join an existing region to create a new region. There is no limit to the number of governorates that can form a region, unlike the Transitional Administrative Law of the Iraqi Interim Government which limited it to three.
A new region can be proposed by one third or more of the council members in each affected governorate plus 500 voters or by one tenth or more voters in each affected governorate. A referendum must then be held within three months, which requires a simple majority in favour to pass.
In the event of competing proposals, the multiple proposals are put to a ballot and the proposal with the most supporters is put to the referendum.
In the event of an affirmative referendum a Transitional Legislative Assembly is elected for one year, which has the task of writing a constitution for the Region, which is then put to a referendum requiring a simple majority to pass.
The President, Prime Minister and Ministers of the region are elected by simple majority, in contrast to the Iraqi National Assembly which requires two thirds support.
Although this may seem like a top down approach, it is worth remembering that when the Constitution was offered to the voters, if three provinces had had no votes greater than two-thrds, the Constitution would have been vetoed. My point is that Iraq already has "federalism" and just needs to flesh it out. What Biden, et. al. are suggesting can be achieved under the current Constitution and the Federalism Law.
“The governates have already been established. They are essentially the 18 provinces that predated the Constitution.”
1. The Constitution of Iraq neither identifies them by name or (b) otherwise.
2. Pre-defined or not, the Constitution of Iraq (1) does not acknowledge governorates as having their own Constitution, as a “region” (only Kurdistan) can, (2)does not define who and how a Governorate Council is established and therefore does not even guarantee that that council will be chosen, and if so democratically, or appointed; and (3)only acknowledges the euphemistic phrase of “administrative decentralization” as the source of what “govenorates” may do and makes it clear that it is subject to federal law.
As far as true “federalism” and the “governorates” the Constitution of Iraq is a schizophrenic.