According to Katouzian, “arbitrary rule” and “short-term society”106
are the two-fold negative characteristics of the Iranian polity that dramatically hindered the rule of law and the entrenchment of democratic institutions in Iran throughout its history. Katouzian argues that arbitrary rule prevailed throughout different stages of Iran’s history regardless of the strength of the government at any given time. He sees that arbitrary rule is both the cause and the effect of Iran’s backwardness..107
Since the democratic institutions in Iran have never had the chance to endure for an “extended period of time”, they could never reach the institutionalisation threshold after which the path dependency could have been attained. In other words, until now the history of most political organisations in Iran consisted of a series of failed attempts of reaching organisational institutionalisation.
Katouzian extends “arbitrary rule” to society as well. In his view “unaccountable state and ungovernable society are two sides of the same coin”.108
He mentions cases in Iranian history where the ruler’s power was disintegrated and the arbitrary rule that was exercised by the ruler was spread among many actors. Each actor then exercised his share of arbitrary rule according to his real power.
As with feudal and capitalist states and societies, an arbitrary state represented an arbitrary society. Indeed, unaccountable state and ungovernable society are two sides of the same coin.109
This ungovernable society then, in turn, would create a breeding ground for a despotic ruler who could save society from the chaos caused by the arbitrary exercise of many. In other words, through trial and error people have learned that one tyrant is better than many and “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
106
Homa Katouzian, “The short-term society: a study in the problems of long-term political and economic development in Iran”, Middle Eastern Studies, 40: 1. (2004), p.1-22.
107 Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajar and the Emergence of the Pahlavies, London,
I.B. Tauris, 2006, p. 2.
108 Katouzian, , State and Society in Iran, p. 14. 109 Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, p. 14.
If the implications of such a system of political parties in Iran are questioned, they could be answered by the short-term society pattern that Katouzian explains.
Hence the long cycles of arbitrary rule-chaos-arbitrary rule. Compared to the long-term society of Europe, the three main features of the short-term society were: the problems of legitimacy and succession; the tenuous nature of life and possessions; and the great difficulty of long-term capital accumulation as a necessary condition for modern social and economic development. Therefore, history was made up of a series of connected short terms.110
According to Katouzian the Iranian “history was made up of a series of connected short terms” and this in itself is an anti-institutionalisation factor. Those who advocate historical institutionalism believe that path dependency process occurs only if “extended period of time” is given to the “positive feedback” to reinforce the path. In other words, inertia and positive feedback complement each other in path dependency and they need time to fully function. Proponents of historical institutionalism believe that resilience over time and growing costs of revision for one chosen path will make the return from the path taken at the critical juncture very difficult. What is central in this theory is the time factor.
This is best explained in Pierson’s diagram below, which shows that while the costs of coordination and veto point reach a plateau after a period of time, the cost of investment and positive feedback will grow by a long way.
110
Homa Katouzian, “The short-term society: a study in the problems of long-term political and economic development in Iran”, p. 19.
Figure 2: Sources of resilience over time
Source: Pierson, Politics in Time, p. 151
It can be seen from the above figure that, “In short, while arguments about vetoes and (to a lesser extent) coordination imply stable costs of institutional revision over time, arguments about investment and positive feedback see these costs as dynamic: institutions are typically not only self-enforcing but self-reinforcing”.111
An extended period of time on one path would mean more investment, and more investment will make the cost of revision higher. With higher costs change will be less favourable. In other words, stability over a relatively long period of time will ensure a secure path dependent institutionalisation process. Path dependent systems rely less on the actors and more on the institution itself. “Once institutions are in place, they facilitate the adoption of other, complementary institutions.
111 Pierson, Politics In Time, p. 151.
...…Veto Points ---Coordination Investment C ost of R evisi on Time
Fig 2.Sources of resilience over time. C
B A
All these arrangements place pressure on actors to adjust, often in fundamental ways, to a new context”.112
While comparing the newly democratising countries in Eastern Europe to the established democracies of the West, Lijphart states that:
For democratizing countries, these choices are particularly crucial because the success of the newly-founded democratic system may depend on it. In addition, if the new democracy does prove to be viable, the initial choices are likely to last for a long time. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967) have pointed out that the party system established at the beginning of a country’s democratic experience tends to become virtually “frozen”. This applies even more strongly to the fundamental constitutional structure: drastic changes in electoral systems and shifts from presidentialism to parliamentiarism or vice versa are extremely rare in established democracies.113
However, stability in an “extended period of time” was a luxury that the Iranian society could not afford. This is one area where Iran is different from the cases studied by Lijphart. A classic example is the change from parliamentiarism to presidentalism in 1989, yet the Iranian history has had the hasty alteration of many institutions in the last hundred years. The Qajar dynasty was deposed by Reza Pahlavi who in turn was ousted by the allies, and finally Mohammad Reza Shah was removed from power by the 1979 revolution.
Hannan and Freeman believe that if organisations are fast-changing, i.e. lacking inertia, then only the intentions of organisational elites matter.114Pierson relates Hannan and Freeman’s observation
to the study of institutions and concludes that without inertia there is no institution.
Institutions are typically not plastic. They do not adapt swiftly and effortlessly. They are subject to change, but the multiple sources of resilience suggest that in many circumstances they will exhibit very substantial inertia. It is this inertial quality that makes them important contributors to an understanding of long-term processes of institutional development.115
The “arbitrary rule” and “short-term society” continued after the revolution. What Katouzian calls “the pick-axe society” could be detected even in the most recent decisions of the current president of IRI. For instance, during his first term of office, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has carried on a massive discharge of personnel from tens of state organisations. Tens if not hundreds of bureaucrats who were in top positions since the time of Rafsanjani and before, were discharged without any right to appeal. Most of these jobs were either scrapped altogether or given to the cronies of the new president and his closest men. In 2007, with a stroke of a pen, he dismantled the
112
Pierson, Politics In Time, p. 150.
113 Arend Lijbhart, “Democratization and Constitutional Choices in Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland” Journal of
Theoretical Politics, Vol. 4, (1992), p. 208.
114
Michael T. Hannan and John Freeman, Organisational Ecology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 33.
Management and Planning Organisation of Iran, a grand institution which, despite going through a lot of evolution, had been responsible for preparing the country’s budget since 1948.
This behaviour was not exclusive to Ahmadinejad of course; the political elites before him were also good at reinforcing the “the pick-axe society”. For example, the dismantling of the position of prime minister in the Republic’s constitution and granting all its authorities to the president in 1989 was performed hastily and without enough deliberation with experts and the political forces of the time.
During Khatami’s rule, although his government placed a great emphasis on adherence to the constitution, the constitutional clause was breached time after time by forces above the president’s control. For example, in 1999 when the reformist Majles tried to amend the rigid laws on the freedom of the press, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei intervened with a hokme hokumati [the executive decree] withdrawing the proposed bill from the Majles agenda.
The history of issuing extra-constitutional decrees in the IRI did not start with Khamenei. Below are instances where this arbitrary rule was exercised by both Khomeini and Khamenei.
The decree by Khomeini assigning the head of Iran’s central bank in January 1987.
A decree in May 1987 by Khomeini allowing Prime Minister Mousavi to set fixed prices for necessary goods.
Khomeini permits the closure of the IRP.
Ayatollah Khomeini’s extra-constitutional decree to appoint the Expediency Council in February 1988.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approved the validity of the Sixth Majles elections (May 2000) despite the Guardian Council’s statement doubting the validity of the election in Tehran.
In 2005 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reinstated reformist presidential nominees Mostafa Moein and Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh after their competence had been ruled upon by the Guardian Council.
A hokm e hokumati [decree of the ruler] issued by Khamenei in 2009 demanding Ahmadinejad to remove Esfandiar Rahim Mashai from the position of vice president.
If we accept the hypothesis by Katouzian that Iranian “history was made up of a series of connected short terms” it could be concluded that since the democratic institutions in Iran have never had the chance to endure for an “extended period of time”, they could never reach the institutionalisation threshold after which the path dependency could have been attained. In other
words, until now the history of most political organisations in Iran consisted of a series of failed attempts of reaching organisational institutionalisation.
In such an uncertain environment, human agency becomes more significant than the institution itself. This is while Iranian party elites were more inclined towards the arbitrary exercise of power than following their formal organisation’s decision making process that involved respect for the chain of command and the party constitution. I will demonstrate in the coming chapters that the strong inclination of party leaders to act arbitrarily instead of acting within the organisational boundaries was an essential reason behind the failure of parties such as IRP.
Historically speaking, the political parties in Iran are suffering from a great organisational chaos, lack of strong leadership and the lack of internal democracy. When Ali Amini, an independently- minded western-educated reformist who was striving to limit the Shah’s greed for power, became the prime minister, the Second National Front (as an organisation) failed to appreciate the opportunity that was provided for them by Amini’s premiership, and instead of accepting Amini’s repeated offers of cooperation, conducted a vicious propaganda campaign against his programmes.116 Finally the Front’s error of judgment, the Shah’s clever manoeuvres and the Americans’ change of heart forced Amini to resign.117
With Amini’s resignation the last obstacle to the shah’s move towards absolute power was removed. Ironically, the Second NF was instrumental in this process, but why should the Front commit such an obvious mistake that would harm itself? Katouzian’s answer is revealing:
If the Shah himself had been in charge of its operations, he could not have used the Front more skilfully in his own favour and against his entire opposition (including the Front itself)! Why did this National Front – in whose hands the fate of a nation - and the trust of a large body of its political public had been put – embark on such an unmitigated suicide mission? The short answer is, because of a combination of analytical feebleness, political and organisational chaos. The political body which had inherited the great legacy of Musaddiq and the Popular Movement was thus an empty bluff which led another popular movement to a perfectly avoidable defeat, and paved the way for the predictable disaster of the Shah’s personal despotism.118
However, the modest but critical progress that was seen in the case of Mosharekat is evidence to the fact that the arbitrary society is not an innate quality of the Iranian society and that it will eventually evolve into a more orderly society. It is worth mentioning that if only the state coercion was not there, the Mosharekat party, as a model of an Iranian modern political party, could
116Homa Katouzian, ThePolitical Economy of Modern Iran, New York, New York University Press, 1981, pp. 220-
223.
117 Masoud Behnoud, Az seid zia ta bakhtiar, [From Seid Zia to Bakhtiar], Tehran, Javidan, 1998. 118 Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran, p. 221.
continue its life and act as a pioneer political organisation in modernising and democratising the Iranian polity.
The short-term nature of the Iranian society and the lack of continuity in many political organisations, including the political parties, have halted their natural organisational and institutional evolution and maturity. However, in recent years the less controllable public sphere such as cyber space (including social networks such as facebook) has provided some kind of safe haven for at least partial continuity of the banned political parties. It is my belief that these safe havens will play an effective rule in maintaining the continuity of at least some aspects of the banned parties such as Mosharekat and MII. Cyber space provides a virtual arena for the banned parties to keep their relations with their social base alive; in addition it will increase the party’s chances of pulling together their rank-and-file after being scattered around by the state coercion (by imprisonment or self-imposed exile). Interestingly it will also increase the reliance on specialists in the cyber arena.
Katouzian’s mentioned theory can without a doubt find its application in the behaviour of many political elites in the first decade of the IRI. Banisadr, Khamenei and Rafsanjani in their roles as party elites and Presidents each have preferred to have maximum freedom and uncontested unaccountable authority. If we see Banisadr’s relation with the Office of President and People Cooperation or Khamenei’s relation with IRP or Rafsanjani with Kargozaran , we realise that the inclination of these leaders toward arbitrary rule has hugely damaged their respective parties’ organisational qualities.
These party leaders (whether director general in the case of Khamenei or spiritual leaders in the case of Banisadr and Rafsanjani) preferred personal dealings with Ayatollah Khomeini than going through the party channels to get things done. Consulting their party first would have cost them a lot of time and effort. We can not help but to think about the arbitrary nature of political power in Iran that was elaborated by Katouzian.