Elite Fragmentation and the Paradox of Authoritarian Persistence in Iran
Disciplinary social scientists have with increasing regularity turned to the question of authoritarian persistence as a mode of inquiry. In an effort to refine the development of theoretical approaches and expand the range of analytic frameworks, some comparativists have instead shifted their focus from asking the long-standing questions "why do some democratic transitions fail?" by inverting the proposition to ask "why do some authoritarian regimes endure?" Scholars have with increasing regularity turned to the Middle East as an avenue of conceptual inquiry. Moreover, Iran has increasingly attracted the attention of comparative scholars with regional expertise who understood it was a ripe area of investigation for theory development and new methodological approaches studying the existence of its durable authoritarian form. More significantly, however, they understood it to be different brand of authoritarianism than seen in the rest of the region. It has a concatenation of democratic institutions with a public that was electorally engaged. Finally, it stood to be a prime example of how an authoritarian state could manage elite divisions and hyper-factionalism when all current indicators of authoritarian robustness pointed in the opposite direction-authoritarian collapse. In this paper I argue that the persistence of the Iranian regime should be understood as product of its unique constitutional and institutional structure
Year of publication: |
2011
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Authors: | Amir, Moheet |
Publisher: |
[2011]: [S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Iran | Elite | Autoritarismus | Authoritarianism |
Description of contents: | Abstract [papers.ssrn.com] |
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