This past Friday Iraq earned the dubious distinction of breaking the world record for the length of time between elections and forming a new government. The previous record holder owned the crown since 1977. It was the Netherlands, having taken 207 for the new government to set up shop.

"There is no difference with the Iraqi case, except that the Netherlands had strong, functioning institutions and a caretaker government that continued to govern," said Joost Hiltermann, a Dutch national and an expert on Iraq at the International Crisis Group. "Iraq has very weak institutions and a caretaker government that can do very little. This makes for a potentially highly unstable and precarious situation."

The election was held on March 7, 2010 and the results, after trickling out slowly, were close. The incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Shiite party won 89 seats in the Iraqi Parliament while the party of secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, himself a former prime minister, won 91 seats.

So why has it taken 208 days to form a government? Well, there’s a procedural answer and a political one.

In Iraq, lawmakers are elected and then vote for the president, who in turn gives the largest coalition in the parliament the first chance to choose the prime minister and form a government. To form a government requires the backing of a majority of the 325 lawmakers.

The process is still unfolding. Some say Netherlands’ record will be broken by a much more substantial margin as the process of settling the contending factions into a viable governing formation still has a way to go.

But Friday also marked a turning point in the six months of negotiations between parties following the election. The Shia National Alliance, headed by Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, announced it would support incumbent Nouri Maliki for a second term as prime minister.

But it is not just a numbers game. Government formation in Iraq is complicated by its multiparty system and violence in the streets.

Jim Muir of BBC News reports that all sides have agreed since the beginning that the four major electoral factions – Mr. Allawi's secular, but Sunni-supported Iraqiya list; Mr. Maliki’s Shia State of Law coalition; the other Shia alliance; and the Kurds -- must all be included in the new government.

But it is not simply a question of which factions to include, but who will lead the new government, what the balance should be in it and who gets which jobs.

The biggest wrench in the works being that Mr. Allawi has said his followers will not participate in a Maliki-led government. It is this head-to-head tussle between the two top contenders – where neither will cede to the other – that could hold up progress toward a new government for a long time.

Naturally, many have expressed concern about what this political stagnation will mean for security and stability in Iraq as the US continues its withdrawal that will see all of its forces gone by the end of next year.