BOOK REVIEW The state versus society in Iran Democracy in Iran by Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
Iran is unique in the Middle East for possessing social ingredients that
portend evolution of genuine democracy. The 1979 revolution's zeal for an
idealized Islamic order made Iran an improbable candidate for the flowering of
democracy, but over the past three decades, Iranians participated in elections,
believed in
the efficacy of their votes to affect politics, and grew to understand the
fundamental logic of democracy. Yet with sovereignty vested in God and the
supreme leader remaining unelected, Iran is not quite a democratic state.
This new book by two respected Iranian academics explains how the country has
struggled to balance state-building (for solving socio-economic and national
security dilemmas) with democracy-building (for empowering society and reducing
state power).
Iran's vulnerability to foreign intervention since the 19th century motivated
the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties as well as the ayatollahs to justify
sacrificing civil liberties and democratic rights to deal with external
enemies. The goals of national integration and development were pursued by
successive regimes by means of dictating to society.
The other roadblock to opening up the political system was ideology - leftist
and Islamic fundamentalist - of which Iranians have progressively become wary.
The realization since 1997 that "Islam is part of the problem and not the
solution" (p 9) yielded slogans for simple democracy in place of "Islamic
democracy". More Iranians today want a plain republic instead of an Islamic
republic.
Arbitrary rule and political decay, coinciding with British and Russian designs
to dominate Iran's economy, led to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and
the country's first parliamentary system. The ideals of that revolution were
enunciated by intellectuals in secret societies, but acquired broad support
among ordinary people through the medium of the ulama (clerics) who were
troubled with threats to the Shi'ite realm.
The constitution granted broad powers of oversight to the ulama, who
would ensure that all legislation was in accordance with Islamic law. Contrary
to liberalism's "society of citizens", the ulama wished to retain Iran
as a "society of believers". Constitutionalism was contradictorily a movement
not only of protecting civil rights, but also of preserving the rights of the
nation. An important strand of the reform movement desired centralization of
power in state institutions that would make governance more effective - the
antithesis of political freedoms for society.
Outbreaks of tribal insurgencies and weakness to forestall foreign penetration
reflected the plight of the constitutional order from 1911-21. Disintegrative
challenges and chaos shifted attention from democracy to state consolidation.
The 1921 coup by Brigadier Reza Khan (later Shah Pahlavi) stepped into the
political vacuum and sought to shift the balance of power within the
constitution from the legislature to the executive. A broad segment of Iran's
population accepted the sequence of "first order and progress, then democracy"
(p 38).
The Pahlavi state subsumed the desire for democracy under the drive for
national development. Kemalism - state control over economy, politics and
culture - rather than constitutional monarchy was the new model of government.
Reza Pahlavi conceived himself as an agent of modernization and concentrated on
"developmentalism" by fostering a bureaucratic state and industrial economy in
lieu of the rule of law. "Reza Shah served only the demand for stability and
progress, ignoring justice and democracy" (p 43). Iran warded off decay, but
unbridled empowerment of the executive culminated in authoritarianism that
inevitably reintroduced the ideal of democracy into circulation.
After Reza Shah's British-imposed abdication in 1941 in favor of his son,
political forces suppressed by the erstwhile king - merchants, liberals,
religious activists and communists - returned to center stage along with the
parliament. During the democratic interlude (1941-53), the pro-Soviet Tudeh
Party mobilized Iranians in the name of justice, but its "totalitarian
addiction" helped to later restore monarchical autocracy.
Mohammed Mosaddeq's National Front came to symbolize democratic ideals in the
face of state power, though he did not advocate individual rights as understood
in today's parlance. Militant ulama, particularly ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and the Fedayeen-e-Islam, put forward ideological resistance to
Pahlavi rule by inciting disruptions and tensions, forcing the monarchy "to
rely on foreign support for its consolidation of power" (p 50).
Concerted action by an alliance among the monarchy, the Iranian military, the
United States and Britain toppled Mosaddeq's government in 1953 on the pretext
of an imminent communist takeover. Shah Mohammed Pahlavi and his allies
resented Mosaddeq's insistence that parliament was supreme and that the monarch
was bound by constitutional restrictions.
From 1954, democracy was reduced to a dead letter. Relying on US aid, the shah
banned political parties, weakened civil society and curtailed the parliament.
As a reprise, "democracy and development came to be viewed as mutually
exclusive, and the former would have to be kept at bay as state-building
proceeded" (p 55).
The White Revolution reforms of 1963 expanded the size of the Iranian middle
class, who ironically showed little support for the monarchy. The religious
establishment gravitated en masse to an anti-Pahlavi stance as
modernization went on, thanks to Khomeini's rulings that enfranchisement of
women and land reforms were "un-Islamic". Radicalization of the opposition and
state use of violence in suppressing it increased the power of the security
apparatuses in the late 1960s.
The oil boom of the 1970s converted Iran into a rentier state, relieving
government of accountability to society and further eroding the shah's
legitimacy. The regime compelled Iranians to join the new one-party system, but
urban dissidents used the networks created by this opening to escalate
opposition. Khomeini skillfully avoided discussion of his theory of an Islamic
state and trained the attention of the disparate anti-state elements on the
Pahlavi monarchy. The tilt toward religion in the revolutionary coalition did
not bode well for the prospects of democracy after the 1979 overthrow of the
shah.
The revolution ultimately shored up state power and expanded its reach into
society. The "Islamic Leviathan" of Iran fit the model of post-revolutionary
authoritarianism in Russia and China by empowering militant actors and
downgrading liberal democratic values. The new constitution provided for
elections "because the more sizable lower and lower middle classes favored the
fundamentalists" (p 92).
The modern middle classes, who were the social base of the pro-democracy
forces, were silenced or crushed with a heavy hand. Khomeini used the US
Embassy hostage crisis and the war with Iraq to portray pro-democracy forces as
stooges of Western imperialism stoking internal disunity in Iran.
Ali-Akbar Rafsanjani's two presidential terms (1989-97) were periods of
significant "developmentalist" state-building with parallels to the Pahlavi
era. When faced with conservative pressure from the revolutionary old guard,
Rafsanjani compromised and even undertook policies counter to the demands of
development. Clerics resistant to full-fledged privatization of the economy
attacked the government on ideological grounds and constrained Rafsanjani's
streamlining efforts. Mercantile capitalism staged a comeback in these years
and the middle class again expanded in number, engendering a renewed interest
in democracy.
The government strengthened higher education to meet the need for skilled
personnel, but the leap in size of university student communities laid the
ground for an important vehicle of democracy debates. Abdol-Karim Soroush and
his intellectual followers formulated a critique of theocracy and the
prominence of the ulama in state affairs.
Devolution of power to provincial and municipal authorities changed the balance
in relations between the center and the periphery and encouraged greater
pluralism. Greater reliance on tax income compelled the state to negotiate with
society over representation and political participation. Private-sector growth
shaped a new urban political culture that rebelled against repressive Islamic
moral codes. The values of the secular social stratum moved to the forefront of
political dissent.
Mohammed Khatami's election as president in 1997 inaugurated a pro-democracy
movement with official sanction for the first time in Iranian history and
raised the tantalizing possibility of power being shared with civil society.
Relaxations on freedom of press, speech and expression reshaped the style and
content of Iranian politics.
Conservative backlash via the supreme leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, quickly put
paid to hopes of a long Prague Spring. Between 1997 and January 2004, the
Guardian Council vetoed 111 of Khatami's 297 bills. Persecution of reformists
and intellectuals went into full gear, and Khatami was forced to concede that
"Islam cannot be separated from Iranian politics" (p 139).
By 2004, a "New Conservatism" emerged on the platforms of strong government to
improve the condition of the economy. It wove relationships of patronage with
the private sector and entrenched itself in decision-making circles. Positing
Reza Shah and East Asian guided democracies as prototypes, "the demand for
democracy was resisted with emphasis on good governance and development" (p
143).
The 2005 presidential election brought to power the hardline conservative
populist Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who rode on socio-economic grievances of the lower
classes and disadvantaged provinces. Reformist candidates ignored the poor and
targeted the urban middle classes with the carrots of cultural freedoms,
civil-society activism and improvement of women's status. Ahmadinejad's
promises of wealth distribution, maintenance of state subsidies, militant
Islamic socialism and a "Third Worldist foreign policy" won the day.
The verdict of the 2005 election was, for the umpteenth time, to strengthen the
state at the expense of society. However, authors Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr
point that since votes from small towns and poorer provinces determined the
electoral outcome, it underscored increasing decentralization of Iranian
politics. The challenge before the pro-democracy forces in the future is to
relate the social pressures for socio-economic deliverance with the traditional
liberal agenda of individual rights, or "in other words, to build bridges
between the middle and lower classes" (p 158).
The authors of this dense work of political analysis do not prescribe any
specific policy line for the international community toward promoting Iran's
home-bred democratic movement. One cannot help concluding from a panoramic
distillation of history that the more threats and coercive tactics Iran faces
on account of the current nuclear standoff, the stronger will be the weight of
state superiority over society. Keeping hands off Iran may be the best bet for
the US administration's professed aim of "democratizing" the Middle East.
Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty by Ali Gheissari
and Vali Nasr. Oxford University Press, New York, 2006. ISBN: 0-19-518967-1.
Price: US$29.95; 214 pages.
This new book by two respected Iranian academics explains how the country has
struggled to balance state-building (for solving socio-economic and national
security dilemmas) with democracy-building (for empowering society and reducing
state power).
