Elections in Iran used to be quite competitive and consequential. However, the democratic elements of the regime were successively weakened and even moderate former President Rouhani is prevented from running for a seat in the Assembly of Experts. The 2024 elections will most likely once again see very restricted contestation and low participation. The increasing lack of representation and participation deepens the legitimacy crisis and remains a huge challenge for the survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Despite strong and brutal repression in the form of mass executions, assassinations inside and outside the country, widespread use of torture and long-term imprisonment, for a long time, elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) used to be more competitive than in many other countries in the MENA region. Iranian citizens used to perceive elections as a meaningful tool to pursue change and to improve their lives. Accordingly, the longest-running protest movement in the history of the Islamic Republic was formed in reaction to a widespread conviction that the 2009 Presidential elections were rigged. In Tehran alone, up to three million people came to the streets on June, 15. Those protests were led by regime elites with very close family ties to other elite fractions and strong revolutionary credentials. Hence, they were not anti-regime by nature although such slogans were shouted, too. The main grievance, though, was the stolen election.

At no point the IRI could be classified as a competitive authoritarian regime. Fundamental change through the electoral pathway is impossible since supreme leader Ali Khamenei stands above all elected bodies. In fact, from 1997 until 2021 the only Presidential election (officially) won by the leader’s preferred candidate was the forementioned 2009 election. Yet, the regime is moving further and further away from society. Political competition in the IRI has always been restricted to those strongly committed to state, ideology, and revolution. Three informal main fractions with different ideas about how to best realize the Islamic Revolution emerged, often referred to as Leftists/Reformers, Moderates, and Conservatives/Hardliners. Compared with his predecessor Ruhollah Khomeini (died in 1989), Khamenei is less of an arbiter between the fractions and more of a conservative partisan. The Guardian Council, a quasi-Constitutional Court and Supreme Election Council since 1992 led by the now 96-year-old Ahmad Jannati, repeatedly used its vetting powers to prevent political opponents from participating in elections. Leftists, who were the strongest force in the 1980s, became more excluded and isolated. In consequence, their discourse shifted towards democracy, reforms, social liberalizations, and less repression.

These reformers received huge electoral support in the 1990s, best exemplified by Muhammad Khatami’s landslide victories in 1997 and 2001. Yet, Khatami was unable or unwilling to truly fulfil his promises and to improve the economy. Unelected bodies, such as the judiciary and security forces, blocked the reformers with the support of the supreme leader. Nonetheless, electoral participation was quite high. For instance, in 2017 with reformers pretty much out of the picture, the election turnout was at 73,3%. The election for the legislature one year earlier saw a turnout rate at around 60%.  

Since then, however, the divide between the state and large wraths of the society is rapidly growing. In December 2017, rising food prices caused nationwide protests. Originally initiated by conservatives to undermine then-President Rouhani, the protests quickly took an anti-regime course. Strikingly, for the first time it was not the urban middle classes but the poor and lower middle classes who challenged the system in masses. Unlike 2009, the regime quickly repressed the protests violently. In November 2019, an overnight triplication of gas prices led to spontaneous protests all over the country. Repression was more brutal than ever: at least several hundred people were killed during a one-week internet shutdown. According to Reuters the death toll was as high as 1500. To make matters worse, the Revolutionary Guards shot down a civilian airplane over Tehran just a few weeks later killing all 176 passengers (and they initially denied all blame).

In this context, the 2020 Parliamentary elections were the least open elections in IRI history. Not only reformers, but also the moderate wing was prevented from competing in a meaningful way and turnout dropped to 42,6%. Similarly, in the 2021 Presidential election the field was set for Ebrahim Raisi to win after he was unable to do so four years later. Unsurprisingly, the turnout was below 50%, with an additional 13% of all casted votes being invalid (more than any other candidate besides Raisi). In 2009, the main protest slogan was “Where is my vote?”, in 2021, a majority didn’t even bother. The death of Mahsa Jina Amini on September 16^th, 2022 started another protest movement that rejected pretty much everything the regime stands for. The list of grievances is long, perhaps best summarized in Shervin Hajipour’s song “Baraye”. Once again, the security forces and the judiciary answered with repression. Around 500 protestors died, many of them teenagers. Others were executed.

So, what can be expected from the 2024 elections? In February, Iranian voters will not only vote for a new legislature, but perhaps more importantly, for a new Assembly of Experts. In case 83-year-old Khamenei dies within the next eight years, the 88 elected clerics will appoint his successor. It is conceivable that the parliamentary election will be slightly more open, but for the Assembly of Experts, the hardliners and Khamenei will certainly make sure to control the institution to install a new leader of their choice. Unsurprisingly, former President Rouhani was banned from competing and joins a long list of former Presidents that became persona non grata in the IRI, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After all, slight openings won’t make much of a difference, anyway. The regime as a whole lost legitimacy, including moderates and reformers.

A lot has been written on elections in authoritarian regimes. The regime benefited from many of the advantages of electoral and competitive authoritarianism, above all domestic legitimacy. But the Iranian case also shows the danger of shutting down the electoral pathway for political participation – rising dissent, other forms of protest and the demand for radical change. Authoritarian regimes are built on three pillars: legitimacy, co-optation, and repression. The long-term development of a secularizing society, economic downturn, blatant nepotism, overall bad governance, and the brutal enforcement of Islamic rules (according to the ruling clerics) have clearly weakened the regime’s legitimacy. Already in 2018, Sadegh Zibakalam, professor for Political Science at the University of Tehran guessed that 70% of Iranians would vote against the Islamic Republic in a hypothetical referendum. Due to the weak economy co-optation of large wraths of the population without reforming the underlying structure of Iran’s corrupt political economy is also getting ever more difficult.

The question therefore remains, how long a regime can survive almost exclusively based on repression. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way show that authoritarian regimes built on social revolutions, such as the IRI, are much more endurable than their other authoritarian counterparts. However, decades of meaningful participation created expectations that are no longer being met. Whenever met with public pressure, the regime kept choosing further autocratization instead of democratization. Nonetheless, with all democratic pathways to pursue change being closed, the regime has become more unstable than ever since its very early days. So far, Khamenei’s ability to hold the elite together and the security apparatus loyal is key to regime survival. But just like in any other authoritarian system, the question of success will be of great importance.

Further literature:
Bayat, Asef (2023): “Is Iran on the Verge of Another Revolution?” Journal of Democracy, Vol 34, No 2, 19-31.
Fathollah-Nejad, Ali (2020): The Islamic Republic of Iran Four Decades On: The 2017/18 Protests Amid a Triple Crisis. Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper.’
Kazemzadeh, Masoud (2023): Mass Protests in Iran. From Resistance to Overthrow. Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Levitsky, Steven / Way, Lucan A. (2010): Competitive Authoritarianism. Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.’
Levitsky, Steven / Way, Lucan (2022): Revolution and Dictatorship. The violent origins of durable Authoritarianism. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Mirsepassi, Ali (2010): Democracy in Modern Iran. Islam, Culture, and Political Change. New York, London: New York University Press.