Unfree and unfair elections in nondemocratic states are designed to guarantee victory for the leader’s coalition, but since these types of elections are held repeatedly, in some cases they pave the way for the convergence of polarized opposition groups. The frequency of nondemocratic elections provides a landscape for divided opposition groups to realize that to affect the outcomes of these elections, they must coordinate to some degree. However, this does not mean that the nondemocratic leader will stop engaging in electoral malpractice in the next election. Instead, coordination among opposition groups forces the nondemocratic leader to close loopholes and to change electoral rules and procedures. In this study, I investigate Iranian legislative elections between 1996 and 2016 and scrutinize the ability of both the leader’s coalition and the opposition coalition to mobilize the masses in large and small cities. Iranian electoral politics illustrates that there have been elections where the opposition camp has neutralized electoral malpractice and has outperformed it. It has happened when against all the efforts of the leader’s coalition (i.e., the establishment), the opponents of the status quo (i.e., the nonestablishment) have been able to solve problems of coordination among themselves in legislative elections.

What cultural issues do incentivize conservative mobilization? Issue-oriented conservative movements run the range from the anti-abortion movement in America to the most recent anti-globalization movements across the World. With the end of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the post-war transitional period started in Iran. Islamist conservatives, who self-identified as revolutionary principlists, understood some of the post-war cultural changes as threats to ideological cores of the 1979 Islamic revolution. One of the most mobilizing cultural issues for principlists after the war was "bad-hijabi" (improper hijab). “Bad-hijabi,” to revolutionary principlists, was the most disturbing cultural issue in the early years after the war. Drawing on Risalat, one of the most widely-read principlists’ newspapers since end of the 1980s, I discuss how principlists mobilized around “bad-hijabi.” I have looked at all issues of Risalat in early years after the war. I have not sampled on specific days or weeks. I have read and analyzed pertinent reports, comments, and op-eds from 1988 (the end of the war) till 1992. I have coded comments, papers and reports to analyze principlists’ language and understanding of "bad-hijabi." I have also looked at various events driven by principlists' outrage in Tehran and other parts of the country. These events include routinized events (for example, Friday prayer sermons), as well as non-routinized events such as disruptive demonstrations and meetings during weekdays. I argue that the “culture war” against “bad-hijabi” was the beginning of principlists’ long campaign against perceived liberal and secular threats in the country, which reached its peak during the Reform Era (1997-2005). I suggest that “bad-hijabi” shaped principlists’ immediate perceptions of liberal cultural threats in post-war Iran. Building on the “culture war” argument and through examining the Iranian brand of “culture war,” this study contributes to issue-oriented social movements, especially conservative movements in the context of Iran.

Despite relentless pressures from within and the outside, the Iranian state has proven remarkably resilient over the last forty years. This resilience, which so far has ensured the state’s survival, is a product of a number of interrelated factors, one of the most central of which is the role of the country’s military establishment. This paper explores the role of Iran’s military forces in ensuring state resilience despite all odds. The Iranian military’s role in this regard is particularly central due to three main, overlapping factors: the military establishment’s highly elaborate institutional set-up and functional complexity; its ideologically highly committed and politically repressive nature; and the military’s exponentially important functions in relation to the economy and domestic politics. Institutionally, the Iranian military is comprised of the professional armed forces, the paramilitary Islamic Republican Guards Corp (IRGC) and its affiliated volunteer Basij forces, and the law enforcement forces. In addition to operations in Iran’s near-abroad, the IRGC is also involved in internal policing and has its own Intelligence division. In order to ensure their loyalty, both the professional military and the IRGC have their own Ideological-Political Directorate, as well as the Leader’s Representatives, who are appointed by and report directly to the Supreme Leader. Moreover, retired IRGC members occupy many of the state’s top leadership posts, from provincial governors to MPs, heads of state agencies and foundations, and business leaders. The IRGC has also emerged as the country’s single most important economic actor, filling the gap left by comprehensive international sanctions as Iran’s biggest contractor and economic conglomerate. Combined, these factors have resulted in the integration of the country’s multiple military institutions into the ruling hierarchy with deep, vested interests in maintaining the system and the political status quo.

Despite rigorous selection criteria and vetting of entrants to politics, Iran’s political landscape is not homogenous but highly factionalized, and marked by ardent struggles for political power where social, political and economic issues are highly contested. Approached through the theory of the sociology of power, where elites constitute actors and ideology constitutes a resource in the elites’ competition for power, this paper contends that ideology serves the political elite to internally enable or disable certain foreign policy actions, exemplified by the nuclear issue. It inquires into how the strategic discursive employment of the official Islamic revolutionary ideology paved the way for negotiations and eventually the nuclear deal, while at the same time facing, as the paper argues, on the one hand dependency on the path that had been established through this very same ideological discourse and, on the other hand, a highly fragmented and factionalized political landscape with diverging opinions on the contested nuclear issue. It is therefore further contended that it is not only material interests that drive competition, but also the control over and appropriation of symbols and meaning. The paper argues that ideology is not a key determinant of foreign policy, but an important power resource, and as such provides the Islamic Republic with continuity and a discursive raison d’être, in upholding the narrative and values of the Revolution, and discursively constructing the Islamic Republic. It also serves as important source for legitimizing and building a coherent narrative around political decisions, including those that otherwise seem to counter the established narrative, such as the engagement with Western nations for the nuclear deal. Interrogating the creation of meaning for political ends, the paper investigates the relationship between domestic circumstances, ideological discourse, and foreign policy action. This is carried out through analyzing and comparing the discursive practices of the Iranian political elite, pertaining to different factions, over the course of Ahmadinejad’s, and Rouhani’s presidencies. The analysis pays special attention to Ayatollah Khamenei as the leader of the official ideological discourse and simultaneously centers on the nuclear issue to place discourse and action into context to understand the specific circumstances that shape ideological discourse and foreign policy at a certain point in time. The analysis is approached through CDA and based on Persian primary material, such as official statements, interviews and pronouncements and adds to larger debates on the instrumentalization of ideology in politics and to studies of political elites.

Despite a wide range of political tendencies from capitalists to anti-capitalists, socialists, nationalists, and Islamists participating in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, it soon became apparent that the revolution was an ideological revolution to transform not just political institutions and social relations, but the subjectivities, lifestyles, and values of all citizens. The dominant voice of the revolutionary elites not only had a moral and religious undertone but also sought to recraft Iranians as new subjects. This research is the study of the efforts and struggles of the Islamic Republic of Iran in reconfiguring Iranians as new citizens. It addresses how the revolutionary state that emerged from the 1979 Revolution developed an ambitious ideological project to craft new subjects as “ideal” Muslim citizens. Since the ideal person of the revolutionary state was mainly characterized as male, it will focus on creating the “ideal” boys of the revolution. In this paper, I will attempt to understand who this “ideal” boy was and what his main characteristics were that the revolutionary state was in search of. Through analyzing stories and images of the popular children’s magazine of the 1980s, Keyhan for Kids (Keyhan Bacheha), I will picture the image of “good boys of the revolution.” I argue that Keyhan for Kids, the state-sponsored magazine, served as the vehicle of the revolutionary state’s project to produce “children of the revolution,” by delivering the ideology of the revolution and the official values of the Islamic Republic to children. I argue that Keyhan for Kids’ highly politicized content should be understood as a part of the comprehensive and ambitious project of the revolutionary state, that is, creating the new citizen.

The paper uncovers determinants of turnout in Iran by studying the role of institutional and socio-economic variables in parliamentary politics since the 2000s. The paper argues that Iran’s electoral system has dichotomized the pattern of participation between center and periphery. The dynamic of participation in the center stems primarily from national shifts in the factional rule. However, in provincial peripheries, Iran’s electoral system promotes the personal particularistic demands of voters in the MP-citizen linkage. In this environment, the discretionary power of local state machinery over the daily lives of provincial citizens lays the ground for the role of local bureaus to influence participation. This argument draws on statistical analysis of parliamentary turnout and the study of several Iranian newspapers and official reports. The findings of the paper suggest a new mechanism by which institutional settings may shape the pattern of participation more generally.