Many commentators point to Iranian civil society as evidence that post-Islamic Republic Iran can become a liberal democracy. But does Iran really have a civil society that can support democracy? True, Iran has a young and educated population and a sustained protest movement, but these do not necessarily translate into civil society. Iranians still lack mature political education and security forces will continue to threaten a free Iran.
Civil society requires formal and informal institutions with hierarchies. Forty-seven years of totalitarianism means that the unpopular state has co-opted all institutions, turning people against these institutions. The United States faced the same problem in Iraq but mitigated it by working with tribal leaders during the Sunni Awakening. Iran, however, is an urban society, with most Iranians not members of large hierarchical institutions.
Civil society requires formal and informal institutions with hierarchies.
The second challenge is the economy. The Islamic Republic is a command economy, with state institutions, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, controlling approximately half of it. When businesses grow, state cronies confiscate them. Consequently, the only capital independent of the state is small businesses with too few employees to enforce structural order.
Economic restructuring will result in disorder. Because the regime controls large businesses, in a democratic Iran, the people will demand revolutionary justice for the stakeholders and demand either nationalization or dissolution. Many of these businesses will not be able to stand on their own without government subsidies and rent because they are not profitable. The Ayandeh Bank, whose lack of profitability led to the collapse of the currency last year, is the best example of this. As a result, mass unemployment appears inevitable.
A similar problem emerged in Russia after communism. Though the country did not descend into absolute chaos, mounting problems and Boris Yeltsin’s poor leadership allowed the security establishment to elevate one of their own to the presidency and to continue their rivalry with the United States. To preempt this problem, Iran will need to remove the security forces from politics and the economy. This requires a lengthy process to reduce the size of the armed forces while promoting officers aligned with the new regime’s vision. Not only will this take time, but it also requires economic growth so that those kicked out of the force can find employment elsewhere. As in Russia, regular elections will prevent this outcome because the security forces will use their wealth and power to intercede.
Political education is a problem, too. There has never been an Iranian enlightenment. In the late 1800s, Iranian intellectuals started bringing in ideas of European enlightenment into Iran. This reached its peak during the Constitutional Revolution in the early twentieth century. But under Russian influence, Mohammad Ali Shah (r. 1907–1909) ended the experiment and cracked down on intellectual life.
Intellectual life further subsided under the Pahlavis. The new dynasty (1925–1979) was only interested in industrialization and economic progress and encouraged technical education. Mohammad Reza Shah (r. 1941–1979) mostly awarded scholarships to engineering students in the United States and Europe to bring back technical expertise, while fearing that liberal arts education would cause a challenge to his authority.
The three organized intellectual forces under the Pahlavis were the nationalists, Islamists, and Marxists. The last two are discredited, but the former, largely influenced by French political thought, persist. Oddly enough, many Iranians who reject the nationalist movement and ousted Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq nonetheless parrot these ideas. But liberal thought never took root in Iran.
Iranians are a society without the institutions and knowledge of self-government. It will be miraculous if they immediately succeed in democratic rule. Those who wish Iran well ought to look for a benevolent strongman whose values largely align with mainstream Iranian values and who will allow institutions and education to take root. The Iranian people appear aware of this. In none of the protests over the last decade have Iranians chanted the word “democracy”; the two most popular chants are “freedom” and “Pahlavi,” in reference to exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.
Iranians are a society without the institutions and knowledge of self-government.
General Vernon Walters wrote in his memoirs, Silent Missions, that President Richard Nixon asked him to travel to Spain to ask an ailing Francisco Franco about his succession plan. Franco told him that Spain would become a liberal democracy because he had restored the monarchy, reinstituted a parliament, and created a market economy. Franco may have been cruel and power-hungry in the first decades of his four-decade rule, but he thought about the future in his final years.
Iran does have an advantage over Spain. Spain did not have a significant diaspora; Iran’s diaspora, especially in the United States, could bring investment, relying on Iran’s large technical experts, and Anglo-American political hitherto missing among the country’s intelligentsia, abetted by the fact that more young Iranians than ever speak fluent English and look to the United States as a model.
What Iranians need, in the diaspora and at home, is an orderly society where investors can trust the return on their investments, people can gradually experiment with self-government, and officers aligned with the society’s values can rise through the ranks of the security forces.
To simultaneously maintain order and practice democracy, Iran needs an elected head of government and a permanent head of state. Iran had this structure under Mohammad Reza Shah between 1941 and1953, when Mosaddeq tried to seize power and precipitated a more dictatorial period when the shah returned from his brief exile. A future democratic Iran necessitates a return to this pre-Mosaddeq period.
