Political Elite Strategy

This article attempts to explain democratization in Iran through an elite-oriented approach. According to this approach, the success and failure of democratization depends on the political elite strategy. My argument is that the fate of democratization is determined by elite strategies. If their strategy is considered suppressive, an authoritarian cycle will take place in the transition stage, but if the political elite strategy is considered non-suppressive, the index of democratic transition increases. In this study, the political elites are divided into two groups: conservatives and reformists. The analysis method is historical-narrative technique. The empirical findings indicate that whenever the hardliners inside the government are stronger than the opposition groups, they constrain the democratization by suppressing the opposition (moderates and reformists), which leads to a decrease in the index of democratic transition, as exemplified in the 13 th parliamentary in 1941. Whenever the reformers are stronger than the conservatives and they are allowed to participate in elections, the index of democratic transition tends to increase, as shown in the 17 th parliament under the rule of Mușaddiq and the 7 th presidential elections after the 1979 Revolution. The data demonstrates that democratization is still fragile in Iran and it’s the fate would be determined by the relative power of reformists and conservatives. As a result, I argue that Iran’s democratic transition is fragile and it’s the fate is determined by the relative power of reformists and conservatives.

This study focuses on the democratization in Iran from 1909 to 2013. I show that Iranian society experienced four waves of democratization. I argue that although Iran has experienced long-run processes of democratic change, the country has not yet been able to establish a democratic system. Meanwhile, these long-run processes of democratic change have led to long-lasting institutional change, realizing some of the minimum criteria of the transition process, including periodic elections. I set out a theory by which democratization increases parallel to the degree of socio-economic development. Importantly, I argue that successful democratization hinges on political elites strategically choosing to refrain from repression. The strategic choices made by the élites determine the main process of the transition stage. I use a novel dataset collected from 33 parliamentary and 11 presidential elections. Using multiple linear regression model, I find that socio-economic development and elite agency explain 0.42 percent of the variation in electoral participation and 0.62 percent of the variation in electoral competition. When elites decide to repress oppositional forces, the democratic transition index decreases by an average of 13.93 units.