Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement

Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement

Author: Paola Rivetti

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-12-26

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 3030322017

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This book examines the unintended consequences of top-down reforms in Iran, analysing how the Iranian reformist governments (1997–2005) sought to utilise gradual reforms to control independent activism, and how citizens responded to such a disciplinary action. While the governments successfully ‘set the field’ of permitted political participation, part of the civil society that took shape was unexpectedly independent. Despite being a minority, independent activists were not marginal: without them, in fact, the Green Movement of 2009 would not have taken shape. Building on in-depth empirical analysis, the author explains how autonomous activism forms and survives in a semi-authoritarian country. The book contributes to the debate about the implications of elite-led reforms for social reproduction, offering an innovative interpretation and an original analysis of social movements from a political science perspective.


Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement

Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement

Author: Paola Rivetti

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2021-01-10

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 9783030322038

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This book examines the unintended consequences of top-down reforms in Iran, analysing how the Iranian reformist governments (1997–2005) sought to utilise gradual reforms to control independent activism, and how citizens responded to such a disciplinary action. While the governments successfully ‘set the field’ of permitted political participation, part of the civil society that took shape was unexpectedly independent. Despite being a minority, independent activists were not marginal: without them, in fact, the Green Movement of 2009 would not have taken shape. Building on in-depth empirical analysis, the author explains how autonomous activism forms and survives in a semi-authoritarian country. The book contributes to the debate about the implications of elite-led reforms for social reproduction, offering an innovative interpretation and an original analysis of social movements from a political science perspective.


The Iran Primer

The Iran Primer

Author: Robin B. Wright

Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1601270844

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A comprehensive but concise overview of Iran's politics, economy, military, foreign policy, and nuclear program. The volume chronicles U.S.-Iran relations under six American presidents and probes five options for dealing with Iran. Organized thematically, this book provides top-level briefings by 50 top experts on Iran (both Iranian and Western authors) and is a practical and accessible "go-to" resource for practitioners, policymakers, academics, and students, as well as a fascinating wealth of information for anyone interested in understanding Iran's pivotal role in world politics.


Passionate Uprisings

Passionate Uprisings

Author: Pardis Mahdavi

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0804758565

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Investigates the emerging, new sexual culture of Iranian youth, in which sexuality represents freedom and engaging in sex can be considered political activism.


Democracy in Iran

Democracy in Iran

Author: Misagh Parsa

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-11-07

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0674974298

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The Green Movement protests that erupted in Iran in 2009 amid allegations of election fraud shook the Islamic Republic to its core. For the first time in decades, the adoption of serious liberal reforms seemed possible. But the opportunity proved short-lived, leaving Iranian activists and intellectuals to debate whether any path to democracy remained open. Offering a new framework for understanding democratization in developing countries governed by authoritarian regimes, Democracy in Iran is a penetrating, historically informed analysis of Iran’s current and future prospects for reform. Beginning with the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Misagh Parsa traces the evolution of Iran’s theocratic regime, examining the challenges the Islamic Republic has overcome as well as those that remain: inequalities in wealth and income, corruption and cronyism, and a “brain drain” of highly educated professionals eager to escape Iran’s repressive confines. The political fortunes of Iranian reformers seeking to address these problems have been uneven over a period that has seen hopes raised during a reformist administration, setbacks under Ahmadinejad, and the birth of the Green Movement. Although pro-democracy activists have made progress by fits and starts, they have few tangible reforms to show for their efforts. In Parsa’s view, the outlook for Iranian democracy is stark. Gradual institutional reforms will not be sufficient for real change, nor can the government be reformed without fundamentally rethinking its commitment to the role of religion in politics and civic life. For Iran to democratize, the options are narrowing to a single path: another revolution.


Religious Statecraft

Religious Statecraft

Author: Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0231545061

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Since the 1979 revolution, scholars and policy makers alike have tended to see Iranian political actors as religiously driven—dedicated to overturning the international order in line with a theologically prescribed outlook. This provocative book argues that such views have the link between religious ideology and political order in Iran backwards. Religious Statecraft examines the politics of Islam, rather than political Islam, to achieve a new understanding of Iranian politics and its ideological contradictions. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar traces half a century of shifting Islamist doctrines against the backdrop of Iran’s factional and international politics, demonstrating that religious narratives in Iran can change rapidly, frequently, and dramatically in accordance with elites’ threat perceptions. He argues that the Islamists’ gambit to capture the state depended on attaining a monopoly over the use of religious narratives. Tabaar explains how competing political actors strategically develop and deploy Shi’a-inspired ideologies to gain credibility, constrain political rivals, and raise mass support. He also challenges readers to rethink conventional wisdom regarding the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the Green Movement, nuclear politics, and U.S.–Iran relations. Based on a micro-level analysis of postrevolutionary Iranian media and recently declassified documents as well as theological journals and political memoirs, Religious Statecraft constructs a new picture of Iranian politics in which power drives Islamist ideology.


Nuclear Politics in Iran

Nuclear Politics in Iran

Author: Judith Share Yaphe

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 70

ISBN-13:

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This collection of analyses on the unintended consequences of Iran's nuclear policy for its domestic and international relations is the first in a series of papers that will examine the impact of critical issues and developments on key countries in the Greater Middle East and on U.S. security interests. This inaugural paper focuses on the nuclearization of Iranian politics, society, and security. Three prominent scholars examine the emergence of an Iranian nuclear political strategy and its role in shaping domestic political discourse and international security policy.


Contesting the Iranian Revolution

Contesting the Iranian Revolution

Author: Pouya Alimagham

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-03-19

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1108475442

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Examines the last forty years of Iranian and Middle-Eastern history through the prism of the Green Uprisings of 2009.


Postrevolutionary Iran

Postrevolutionary Iran

Author: Mehrzad Boroujerdi

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780815635741

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The 1979 revolution fundamentally altered Iran’s political landscape as a generation of inexperienced clerics who did not hail from the ranks of the upper class—and were not tainted by association with the old regime—came to power. The actions and intentions of these truculent new leaders and their lay allies caused major international concern. Meanwhile, Iran’s domestic and foreign policy and its nuclear program have loomed large in daily news coverage. Despite global consternation, however, our knowledge about Iran’s political elite remains skeletal. Nearly four decades after the clergy became the state elite par excellence, there has been no empirical study of the recruitment, composition, and circulation of the Iranian ruling members after 1979. Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook provides the most comprehensive collection of data on political life in postrevolutionary Iran, including coverage of 36 national elections, more than 400 legal and outlawed political organizations, and family ties among the elite. It provides biographical sketches of more than 2,300 political personalities ranging from cabinet ministers and parliament deputies to clerical, judicial, and military leaders, much of this information previously unavailable in English. Providing a cartography of the complex structure of power in postrevolutionary Iran, this volume offers a window not only into the immediate years before and after the Iranian Revolution but also into what has happened during the last four turbulent decades. This volume and the data it contains will be invaluable to policymakers, researchers, and scholars of the Middle East alike.