Party politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Abstract

This chapter examines party politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran with the goal of gauging the potential of competing political factions as platforms for dissent and oppositional activism. While poorly institutionalised and suffering from uneven access to resources, the factions’ political potential and organisational capacity expand during the electoral cycle, with the result that campaigns platforms may become venues for political participation and oppositional activism. It is hard to assign a pre-determined, fixed function to political factions in Iran. Their role depends on broader configurations of power relations and structural constraints in specific contexts. The chapter does not attempt to reject the argument that the Iranian regime is becoming increasingly authoritarian. Rather, it challenges the argument according to which political parties or regime-approved factions are mere tokens of the authoritarian regimes by discussing their functions in specific contexts and times, such as during electoral cycles.