When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) the Sunni extremist group, quickly conquered much of Sunni-dominated Iraq in 2014, pundits described it as a natural outcome of the country’s sectarian inheritance. Iraq’s artificial borders, drawn in 1920, placed the country on the fault line of the world’s Sunni-Shia divide. ISIS’s quick successes, the thinking went, were simply another manifestation of that division. Yet our research in Iraq indicates that a major factor in ISIS’ rise was not immutable sectarian division but rather an absence of inclusive, responsive and accountable governance….