Election of Raisi as a Turning Point in Islamic Republic Typology

• In Event: The Evolution of Authoritarian Governance: Strategies, Ideology, and Institutions

Abstract

Does Raisi's presidency at the start of the 2020s represent a typological transformation of Iran's political landscape? In 2021, Ebrahim Raisi was elected not only as a result of a factional power rotation between Reformists and Principlists, but also as a result of a shift from elective authoritarianism to absolute authoritarianism. Although it is too early to adopt a defining term for this new era, Raisi's first two years served as an overture to what the supreme leader of Iran calls the "Second Stage" of the Islamic Revolution.

Scholars have defined the Islamic Republic as an electoral authoritarian government. Throughout the quarter century preceding Raisi’s election, the contestation between the Reformist and Principlist factions, born from a division of political elites in the 1980s, functioned as the state’s primary mechanism of political participation and circulation of power. By employing process tracing as the principal methodology of this research, I will discuss the causal mechanisms that have gradually terminated this dual factional contestation. To do so, I will examine the roots of the decay in two political camps within the state, including the widening gap between delivering reform and meeting the radical demands of the base; the regime’s co-optation mechanisms; international economic sanctions; and the deterioration of electoral instantiation in favor of the power of the supreme leader and his subordinate institutions.

Author

• Amir H. Mahdavi, University of Connecticut