3 Governing after protests: the case for political participation in post-2009 Iran

Abstract

The 2009–10 protests were a watershed moment in the history of the Islamic Republic: what governance arrangements were possible after the society and the ruling elite became so polarised as an effect of their de facto exclusion from the ruling institutions and the public sphere? This chapter shows that the effort to refashion governance after the protests reignited the constitutional debate around the foundation of the Islamic Republic, emphasising its epistemological plurality. Individuals calling for the overcoming of social and political polarisation, in fact, built their claim on both the secular and the religious nature of Iran’s governance structure, rather than stressing its religious tenets exclusively. This suggests that in order to explain the ‘pragmatic’ approach to governance, dilemmas pillared around individual and collective rights that Islamists in power might adopt, it is necessary to complement theories centred on Islamic moderation, or analyses pivoted on Islamic liberalism, with a richer and multi-sourced understanding of the intersection between politics and religion. Adopting such a broadened perspective, the following pages will first discuss the centrality of demands for political participation and rights in the history of Iran. This is then followed by an analysis of how Iran’s legal hybridity has provided a fertile environment for reclaiming political participation as a fundamental right encoded both in history and the law. In a third and final section, the chapter illustrates how both oppositional and pro-regime forces have utilised a common historical background and legal plurality to advance the demand for a more inclusive political environment, tolerant of diversity, in the post-2009 era.