The paper discusses the legitimizing capacity of Iran’s political system prior to and after the 2009 presidential election. I argue that the system’s ability to produce alternatives and engage the population has contributed to bridge the state-society divide in what is often referred to as a “rentier state”, and as such challenges some basic assumptions of the latter theory. I argue that the discourse of Mir-Husayn Mousavi, Mehdi Karrubi and others in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential election illustrate this legitimizing mechanism, while raising the question of whether the Islamic Republic is still able to capitalize on internal competition.

We read in the literature on the contemporary Iranian politics that the main obstacles preventing formation of democracy in Iran are institutional and structural. This is the case at the local level as well, where structural factors such as gender, ethnicity, cultural norms, religious beliefs and ideological orientations affect the capacity of the citizens of the local communities to participate in the local political discourse and in the local governance. For a long time, these obstacles combined with institutional factors rooted in the ideological formation and practice of these institutions had excluded part of the population from the political process in general and the electoral process in particular. Now, more than a decade after the first local elections in 1999 we can raise the question whether or not local elections and local councils unleashed new political and cultural forces that challenge these impediments. The first question to be raised is to what extent have the local elections and local councils been able to make a change in the content of political discourse embedded in these institutional, structural, ideological and cultural barriers? The second question is, through what means the changes in the content of the political discourse at the local level have taken place. I shall argue that local elections and municipality councils have created a sense of intellectual and political agency that willingly, or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously surpass old barriers and shape an inclusive democratic public space that seems to have empowered the ability of citizens to influence the local and national political discourse. This paper aims to analyse the elements contributing to this new intellectual and political agency and asses the extent of their impact on the local and national political discourse since 1999. The paper deals with the emergence of a group of intermediary intellectuals and political activists who have played a decisive role in changing the cultural and political environment of the two provinces of Khuzestan and Bousher and in doing so have created a lively public arena in which local and national cultural and political matters are carefully and rationally debated. The analysis of the position of the local publications, daily newspapers, weekly magazines and books through which the local intellectuals and political agents express their views, ideas, arguments to construct or define their political identities, form solidarities, formulate strategies and tactics towards collective actions, is another task of this paper.

Through the debate on the Internet and public sphere over the last year, a near-consensus has emerged on some important aspects; the importance of the notion of “public sphere” when examining the democratic development in the Middle East, that there is an emerging public sphere to be found on the World Wide Web, and the advantages of a notion of “public spheres” rather than Habermas` normative concept of “the public sphere”. These claims are the point of departure for this paper. However, as the Internet is more or less indefinite in size, any function as a public sphere could obviously not be determined from its entirety. Therefore, I argue, the debate referred to above would benefit from case studies, that is, a study of specific, related sites in their relevant context within a limited period of time. As such, this paper will both be able to test the claims referred to above as well as to draw conclusions on the democratic development in my case of study; Kuwait. More specifically, I will examine what came to be known as “The Orange Movement” in Kuwait, and their use of the Internet. “The Orange Movement” was a loosely defined popular movement campaigning for five electoral districts and against corruption, making extensive use of the Internet. The sources for this paper will be blogs and discussion forums used by the movement and its sympathizers, sites raising issues related to their cause – during their campaign and the general elections between May until August 2006 - as well a campaign site and YouTube channels. Furthermore, the paper will benefit from interviews conducted with activists, politicians and students. Based on different theoretical perspectives, as well as ongoing debates, the paper will present a working definition of the notion of a public sphere. On this basis, I will argue that the Internet did indeed constitute a public sphere for those involved in the reform and/or election campaign of 2006. The participants could engage each other in ways impossible offline. Furthermore, it had the ability to affect reality – the campaigns – and thus, I argue, enhancing the participatory aspect of Kuwait`s somewhat limited and fragile democracy. Moreover, my findings suggest such a public sphere may even contribute to the safeguarding of democratic institutions in times of turmoil, as my paper will show.

Rare is the evening in the tiny Gulf emirate of Kuwait when the roads are not packed with carloads of men on their way to a diwaniyya. So much so, that scarcely a night passes without some assemblage of male cohorts gathering in these establishments to engage in a lively discussion, or play an animated game of cards, or simply to enjoy each other’s warm company. It is within these diwaniyyat (sing. diwaniyya), or reception rooms, with their regular, almost choreographed performances of hospitality that unfold the dealings and transactions that are so vital to both family and community life in this modern rentier state. Unfortunately, as with much of literature in general on the guest room / guest house institution in the Middle East, there is little information that could accurately characterize the diwaniyyat as they exist within the social fabric of Kuwait. This paper fills that vacancy in the current scholarship by demonstrating the essential role that these enterprises play in a paternal state that seemingly provides for all of its citizenry’s needs. Consequently, this study is a unique examination of the guest room / guest house custom in the contemporary Middle East and a pioneering ethnographic investigation of the Kuwaiti diwaniyyat. While this presentation is informed by previous findings, albeit limited, on the guest room / guest house tradition in the Arab world and Central Asia, it relies on a merger of the author’s contextually-specific fieldwork in Kuwait and the analytical models of social capital in terms of its availability, accessibility, and malleability. Thus, this inquiry will attempt to resolve two conceptual issues as they pertain directly to the Kuwaiti diwaniyyat: (1) Why have the diwaniyyat not only persisted but prospered when researchers investigating analogous institutions have envisioned their demise in the wake of economic diversification and state centralization? (2) How do the Kuwaiti diwaniyyat adhere to, or deviate from, the related notions of symbolic capital, cycle of conversion, and value power as espoused by Bourdieu, Barth, and Antoun?

Electoral Religion: Salafis and Muslim Brothers Competing for Votes in Kuwait The Kuwaiti Parliament has the distinction of being both the oldest and the most vibrant in the Arab Gulf states. Its position is clearly the strongest in relation to the monarch. This is a result both of the struggles of a vital civil society, and of a historical relationship between the merchant class and the royal family marked more by a division of tasks than by the one side ruling the other. Perhaps it is no accident, then, that the Kuwaiti National Assembly (majlis al-umma) is also marked by being an arena for various Islamist tendencies competing with each other and with the still strong power of the ruling family. In the elections in May 2008 Islamists of various persuasions strengthened their position from a combined total of 21 deputies to 26, which gives them a slight majority of the 50 elected members of the assembly (in addition the government ministers appointed by the emir join the assembly as voting members ex officio). The three mainstream Sunni Islamist groups, the Islamic Constitutional Movement (Muslim Brothers), the Salafi Movement and the Islamic Salafi Alliance together with independents control 21 seats, while the main Shia Islamist group, the National Islamic Association had 5 deputies elected. The participation of salafi groups in electoral politics is special, since in the Middle East region in general the conservative salafiyya tendency remains either apolitical, contenting itself with preaching religion and doing social work, or (for a small minority’s part) is engaged in violent struggle to topple regimes considered to have strayed off the true Islamic course. In both cases the salafis maintain a harsh criticism of the Muslim Brothers for being both to open to what the salafis see as Westernising modernisation, and to lenient towards the existing regimes. The paper will discuss the impact on the various Islamic faction of their long-time participation in electoral politics, with special emphasis on the competition between the Muslim Brothers and the salafi tendency. It will argue that the openness of the electoral competition in Kuwait has hastened the crystallisation of competing Islamist tendencies, and, as importantly, that participation triggers among the salafis processes of moderation and modernisation, and of openness towards cooperation with other groups.