3 Governing after protests: the case for political participation in post-2009 Iran

Abstract

While driving on Bakeri Expressway in Tehran in 2016, one of the two authors' friend, A., recalled a protest during the summer of 2009, when the people of Iran took to the streets, giving form to what has since come to be known as the 'Green Movement'. 1 In June 2009, and for months later, protests took place in several cities across the country against the reelection of Mahmood Ahmadinejad (r.2005-13) as president of the republic, an election that the protesters considered rigged. The 'Green Movement', or the fitna (sedition) as it is called by the forces that countered it, constituted the fiercest challenge to the stability of the Islamic Republic yet. What started as a dispute over the election results spiralled, as the months passed by, into a comprehensive confrontation between the opposition and Ahmadinejad's government, with radical fringes aiming their critique at the regime itself. 2 As A. recalled:We were in Parkway [an important junction in North Tehran where portraits of martyrs from the Iran-Iraq war are at display], and people were shouting "Basiji vaghei Hemmat bodo Bakeri" (the real bassij were Hemmat and Bakeri) against the bassij 3 that had beaten up their brothers and sisters during the protests. The reality is that if Bakeri and Hemmat were alive, they would protest with us to defend the truth and honour of the Islamic Republic, which they created, and to allow people to protest: how do you think the revolution happened? 4This short excerpt of a longer conversation directly speaks to the relevance of the issue of political participation in the Islamic Republic, whose political system synthetises authoritarian and democratic characteristics and subsumes political participation as a fundamental trait of its history and genealogy, thus offering fertile ground to build arguments in favour of expanding it. According to the constitution, in fact, Iranians can participate in