Political Decentralization and the Creation of Local Government in Iran: Consolidation or Transformation of the Theocratic State?

Social Research, Summer, 2000 by Kian Tajbakhsh

Introduction

IN February 1999, Iranians went to polls for the first time in their history in competitive elections for over 200,000 local government posts. Notwithstanding fears that the elections would be delayed or even canceled by those threatened by the possibility of another reformist victory, they went smoothly. Although detailed results are not yet available, reformists or reformist-minded independents won many if not a majority of the council seats, including those in major cities. The process was just as important as the results--the local elections were very popular and entirely new groups of people participated in the elections as candidates: young professionals, many women, and many technocrats, ran ads in newspapers, and put up wall posters with their qualifications and experience prominently displayed. A significant proportion of women were elected to local council seats; in some cities they form a majority of the council (Tajbakhsh, 2000). The councils have been in operation for a little over a year, and are now an important aspect of the evolving form of the Iranian polity as it struggles to redefine itself. (Due to limitations of space, I have not presented an analysis of the elections themselves and of the preliminary results, which I have provided elsewhere.)

Part of a broader set of decentralization reforms, these elections brought into being a new tier of local government. While the germ of the idea of local democratic institutions can be traced to the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, in terms of both scale and form these reforms are unprecedented in Iranian history. Legal provisions for elected local government institutions have existed in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) since 1979, but it is only now, twenty years after the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi monarchy, that this constitutional requirement has been put into effect. Although Iranian national and international politics has been the focus of a substantial amount of analysis, much less attention has been given to local politics. As Chehabi has observed, "this neglect vitiates our understanding of contemporary Iran, as it is at the local level that state policies are carried out, contested, reshaped, resisted, or revised" (1997, 235).

Clearly, it is too early to judge whether the new structures of local governance will lead to a more differentiated polity, contribute to the growth of civil society institutions, create an effective and responsive urban politics and policy arena, and thereby contribute to the democratization of Iranian society--all ambitious goals articulated by supporters of the reforms (see Khordad 12/29/98). Given this proviso, the central question I address in this paper is the extent to which the continuing political development and institutionalization of political democracy in Iran represents a consolidation or a potential transformation of the Iranian theocratic regime twenty years after its founding. In this paper, therefore, I analyze the debates within Iran. I do this to better understand the nature and scope of political discourse in contemporary Iran with respect to the reform of political institutions, efforts at decentralization of state power, and the dilemmas and controversies surrounding the notion of civil society in an Islamic context.(1)

Historical Background

In 1978, the year before the fall of the Pahlavi monarchy and the inauguration of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Moussavi Ardebili, a senior cleric and supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini, visited the future leader of the Islamic Republic in his exile home in Paris to discuss the shape of the future Constitution (Saghafi, 1998). One of the issues discussed was the role and place of "councils" (showra in Persian). According to Ardebili, Khomeini supported the notion and said that as soon as the new regime was established the regional and local councils should be given their appropriate responsibilities and authority. A draft of the articles regarding the councils was worked up in Paris and sent to Tehran. It subsequently became the subject of some of the most controversial debates within the special assembly charged with drafting the new constitution. (Ardebili was one of the 70 members of this body.) Although written into the founding document, the idea of local councils or local self-government (khod-mokhtari) was ultimately subordinated to other conceptions of authority, principally that of velayat-e faqih (the rule of the clergy) and parliamentarism and presidentialism at the national level.

In 1980, several months after the ratification of the Constitution, Khomeini again urged the implementation of the regional and local councils. A bill outlining the scope of authority and responsibilities of these local councils and their electoral procedures was developed and sent to the Majles (parliament). The bill was quickly approved, and a first round of elections were hastily held in 150 cities in October 1980 (Mehr 1358), indicating that the question of the councils was important for the revolutionaries. For several reasons, the idea of locally elected municipal, village, and provincial councils was put on hold for almost twenty years. Chief among these were the war with Iraq, the centralizing requirements of a new state, and perhaps most significantly, the eruptions of armed ethnic conflict in the provinces in 1980 and 1981--it was feared that devolving even limited autonomy to local institutions would stoke the flames of separatist aspirations. In the mid-1980's, when the issue of the councils made one of its periodic appearances, Ardebili commented, "This issue of the councils, which today has become popular and controversial, is not a new one for us. The question of the councils is an Islamic matter and the foundations of this Revolution should be built from this Islamic and far-reaching principle" (Proceedings, 1365 (1986), 991, cited in Saghafi, 1998, 7).(2)