Nature of the Iranian Reform Movement: Existence and Causes

Abstract

The third chapter documents the emergence of a reform movement in Iran in the late 1990s. The first section raises a number of more general questions pertaining to such a movement in the context of an authoritarian political regime. The first question relates to the issue of whether we can indeed speak of a social movement in the context of Iranian society in the post-revolutionary era. The second section assumes the presence of a reform movement in Iran in the second half of the 1990s and then proceeds to “prove” its existence by referring to the noticeable increase in non-governmental organizations, the noticeable increase in the independent press, the diversity of narratives reflecting different ideologies, policies and lifestyles, powerful counter-movements, dramatic changes of individual appearance in public, dramatic decreases in youth appearances in religious places in the hands of people who represent ideologized religion, and electoral successes by reformist candidates.