What happened to freedom?

This is an essay I wrote a few years back about the rise and fall of the Iranian reformist movement. It´s a little outdated, but still provides some interesting points.


In defiance to conventional wisdom, the last decade has seen a growing tendency of democratization within certain Islamic movements in the Middle East, in terms of commitment to democratic principles and human rights (Francois Burgat 2002, James Piscatori 2002, Are Knudsen 2003). The movements are known under different names, some of which are reformists, the Islamic left, new Islamists or Islamic democrats. In the 1990s and early 2000, one of these movements could be found in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Here the movement won Presidential and parliamentary elections in 1997, 2000 and 2001 by championing democracy and the rule of law. But despite the reformist’s dominance in both the executive and legislative branch, they proved unable to implement any substantial changes. The institutional arrangements are designed to protect the Islamic character of the republic, and through these, elements within the conservative faction of the regime are in the position to overrule any attempt at change. Their fear of reform has spawned a renewed wave of suppression. This has led to a paradoxical situation; by voting for pro-democratic candidates, the population has received less instead of more freedom. It seems that the Iranian people have retreated into a state of political apathy, and the reformist movement is declared dead. What can explain this situation?

This paper seeks to explore new Islamism in Iran, as represented by the reformist movement fronted by former President Mohammad Khatami. The aim is to clarify and discuss the ideological and political battle taking place between the reformist movement and the regime hard-liners. Focus will be on the relationship and interaction between the state, the elite and the civil society. In clear terms, I have four interconnected questions that can be phrased as the following: what triggered the rise of the reformist movement? What challenges did they meet, and what may explain their failure at implementing reform? What are the possible implications following from this experience? By combining elements from transition theory, mobilization theory and certain structural and institutional factors, I hope to generate a few possible answers. The first part will provide a clarification of the term “New Islamism”. This clarification will also place the pro-democratic Iranian movement in an international and historical context. Further on follows a discussion on the relationship between state and society in Iran. This relationship is in large part determined by how the ruling elites perceive the population. Two conflictual conceptions will be introduced, each of them embodied in the Iranian Constitution of 1989 (Brumberg 2001). This Constitution provided the political opportunity structure which allowed for the uniting of the reformist factions, as seen in part five. Structural factors enter the arena when we encounter the alienated civil society further on. Here the potential and mobilization of the Iranian civil society are discussed, as the uniting of reformist elites and the mass results in a democratic movement of great force. This movement prompted a reaction from the hard-line conservatives, which may explain its failure. This will be analyzed in part seven, before turning to what the results of this failure may be.

The Green Democrats
” The real issue is not what Islam is, but what Muslims want. Contemporary Islam is a dynamic phenomenon. It includes not only Bin Laden and the Taliban, but also liberals who are clearly embarking on their own Reformation..” Graham E. Fuller, Foreign Affairs 2002

Fuller’s words provide us with an appropriate opening for this inquiry. In opposition to Samuel Huntington’s "The Clash of Civilization", the religious dogmas of Islam are not treated as static structures, but as subject to various interpretations. As David Beetham points out, not many decades have passed since the Catholic faith was judged incompatible to democracy. The democratic transitions in Southern Europe rapidly disqualified this notion (1999). In contradiction to the many voices proclaiming Islam’s incompatibility with democracy, Islamist movements from around the world are committing themselves to the rule of law and democracy. It seems that the movements have realized that obtaining power through weapons, force and authoritarian means is counter-effective, and that democracy is the best way of generating support for their Islamic message. This may be an effect of both globalization and the fall of the Soviet Union . Through the global media and the new means of communication, people are well aware of events taking place in the rest of the world. The current wave of popular demand for democracy across the Middle East can serve as an example. Furthermore, the end of the Cold War lifted the extreme superpower intervention in the developing countries, thus giving more space to local dynamics. Hence, liberal democracy seemingly remained the only alternative to authoritarian rule. However, that assessment might have come to early. Huntington does have a point when he criticizes Fukuyama on his "end of history" optimism. Global culture has yet to become one homogenous idea system fuelled by Western ideals and values. New Islamism can be read as an attempt to create a third alternative; an Islamic model for democracy. Instead of treating Islam and democracy as contraries, the combining of the two can perhaps lead to a broader and more substantial democratic movement. Installing democratic institutions are futile if the institutions lack meaning for the citizens. In certain countries and within certain segments, Islam has proved to be a powerful force in uniting citizens against supressive regimes. Further more, it has also become a tool through which actors can voice their misgivings and demands for change. Although a so-called "Islamic" model of democracy is not without its complications, Islam's role as a source of mobilization and democratic learning should not be underestimated.


Different Shades of Gray
The President and Parliament in Iran are chosen through democratic elections. But the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khamenei) and the Council of Guardians (where the Supreme Leader indirectly chooses the members) oversee these institutions. Together with the judiciary (also indirectly chosen by Khamenei) they form a “second tier” of government institutions that stand above the democratic ones. They are designed to ensure the religious character of the Sharia -ruled state. This stems from Khomeini’s concept of the velayat-e faqih (rule by the religious expert). The velayat-e faqih has been interpreted to mean that the religious authorities, with the Supreme Leader at the front, have the last word and ultimate authority. This is deemed necessary on account of the need to interpret the Koran and the Sunnah in the right way. And the right to define what ”the right way” consists of is reserved strictly for the members of the clergy. By making Islam, the source of political authority, into an esoteric knowledge inaccessible to the common man, the state itself is removed from the democratic grasp of the people (Beetham 1999: 97).

The velayat-e faqih in its current form points to a conception of the people which I call” the community of lambs”. The term implies that the people are ”lambs” in need of guidance and protection from the many onslaughts to the true faith. They are themselves incapable of knowing what is in their own interest, and have a duty (as faithfuls) to obey the religious authorities. Thus, the relationship between the state and the society can be described as the relationship between the shepherd and his flock of lambs . While states ultimately are forms of domination, this kind of domination drastically limits the interaction between state and society. By this I mean the kind of reciprocal influence inherent in substantial democracies. Here, the civil society influences the domination of the state not only through elections, but also through associations, organizations, culture, media and economic activities. Paternalistic states, on the other hand, seek to minimalize influence from the population by controlling the sphere between the state and the individual: the civil society.

For many years the elections for President and Majlis (Parliament) have functioned as a democratic facade; the Council of Guardians ultimately determines who will be allowed to run for election. Candidates who are judged to lack ”the necessary loyalty to Islam, the Republic and the Supreme Leader” are barred from participating (Bouromand and Bouromand 2001). Still, the Council’s right to exercise this control is contested. To quote the Islamic left-winger Khoeyniha: ” God (..) has given the people the right to form a government, for their society to choose a ruler ( Salam 24 July 1995). As would be apparent, this implies a very different interaction between state and society: the power of the state stems from the people as citizens. This democratic ideal can be conceptualized as ”the community of citizens” who, in clear opposition to ”the community of lambs”, embodies the liberal notion of individuals with both the right to, and the capacity for, self-determination. Iran’s population is therefore conceived of as both lambs and citizens. Daniel Brumberg calls this the politics of ”dissonance”, ”because it points not to a coherent system but rather to the deliberate and uneasy linking of competing notions of political community.” (2003: 146).

The struggle between the reformists and the conservatives is in more than one sense a struggle to determine which of the two notions of political community shall dominate. But the situation is not as simple as one may think. Instead of a clean-cut division between hard-liners and soft-liners, we have multiple divisions, ranging from secularists vs. Islamists, moderates vs. militants and religious conservatives vs. religious liberals. The Second of Khordad Front embodied nearly all of these divisions. Thus, it was a fragile coalition. The following part explores what factors and orientations brought the coalition together in the first place

Coming Together: The Second of Khordad Front
The 1989 reform of the Constitution opened the door to reformers who espoused a more liberal view of Islam. Drawing on Tarrow’s work on the opening of authoritarian systems, the reform created a change in the political opportunity structure (1998) Ten years had passed since the revolution, but the debate about what kind of Islamic community one wanted was not settled. The process of routinization of charismatic power had begun, with the charismatic leader himself, Imam Khomeini trying to find ways to institutionalize his power.

The reform of the constitution was intentionally designed to create a certain amount of tension, by dividing the power between the faqih, the Majlis and the President. According to Daniel Brumberg, this stems from Khomeini`s conclictual view on clerical rule; by controlling everything, the clergy would also be responsible for everything that went wrong. Thus, democratically elected powerholders would share the responsibility, and thereby also the blame, for social problems. In this way the clergy would not compromise their credibility by exceeding their own limits (2001: 117)

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected President 1989 through a managed election common to this period (Ansari 2003: 243). Despite being a liberal in the economic sense, his veiws on political and civil freedoms were conservative. Still, he was in favour of, in Brumberg’s words, ”a cultural mini-glasnost” and through this, the strengthening of civil society. Rafsanjani`s Minister of Islamic Guidance, Seyyid Mohammad Khatami, sparked a revival of the Iranian film industry by easing the restrictions laid on artists. The crack-down from the conservatives came in 1992. The Majlis were purged of the ”radical” elements, and Khatami resigned, refusing to be part of the destruction of the state. Intellectuals like Abdul Karim Soroush and Abbas Abdi were verbally and physically attacked, and media companies that had received their licences from Khatami were banned. But instead of beating to the ground these new and dangerous trends, the crack-down spurred a uniting of different liberal factions who otherwise would not have found common ground (Brumberg 2001: 186-189). These “children of the revolution” now started questioning the nature of the state they themselves helped to create. Among these were Abbas Abdi, one of the leaders of the radical student organization behind the seizure of the US embassy in 1979, and Sourosh, a “secularist” advocating the separation of state from religion. Khatami, in his turn an important ally of Khomeini`s, believed that democracy could be achieved through the existing system. Despite the myriad of different factions, the crack-down served to unite them. Many of these would eventually form the Second of Khordad Front, named after the date Khatami was elected President.

Being supporters of the Islamic Republic, Khatami, Souroush and the others watched with growing concern how the state had managed to alienate a generation of individuals born after the revolution. One of the necessary conditions for regime opening, that of tensions within the regime, was quickly becoming more visible. Thus, the simplified but useful distinction between regime hard-liners and soft-liners can be made at this point (O’Donnel and Schmitter 1986). It is also possible to claim that the alienated civil society itself created, or at least furthered, these regime tensions. While the hard-liners saw no reason to change the system, Khatami, Ayathollah Montazeri and others viewed things differently. Khatami warned that without reform the whole system could come crashing down in the face of the growing disenchantment of the people. How could the Republic be saved? It is possible to claim that this very question is echoed throughout the Middle East: the waning legitimacy of state authority makes it paramount to find a way of generating renewed support. For Khatami and his circle the answer was to democratize the existing system. This meant fewer restrictions and more autonomy to the public, increased protection of human rights and the spread of tolerance and pluralism within the state administration. Furthermore, Khatami took as his point of departure Soroush’ idea of an “Islamic civil society”. By opposing the clerical monopoly on interpreting Islam, Soroush was advocating a shift from ”the community of the lambs” towards that of the citizens. Through the active participation of redefining and applying Islam, the population will endorse the religion and reject the cultural onslaught from the West. Khatami argued that this rejection could no longer be achieved through suppressive methods. Dictated by the global context, one had to strive for an open dialogue between all members of society. In the conservative newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami, Khatami, when asked about the role of the clergy, states that ” society should rely on all the people and not only the elite because this elite may deviate from the correct path”. For while ” relying on religious leadership is necessary, it is not sufficient ” (February 1997). ”All members” also include those that are not Muslims, as tolerance and pluralism are important factors in the Islamic civil society (Khatami 1995: 45).

Waking Up the Neighbourhood: The People Arise from Apathy
One important condition a repressive regime relies on for survival in the face of a dissatisfied public, is the separation, or delinking, of the elites from the mass (or the parties from their constituencies). Prohibiting opposition leaders from mobilizing the masses is essential for the continued legitimacy of the regime, a safeguard against mass upheavals and demands for change ( Brumberg 2003: 147 ). In this process it seems the ruling clerical elite has succeeded only too well in cutting themselves off from society. The well-educated population of Iran is young; 70 percent are under 30 years. According to various sources they are for the large part ” de-islamized”; they neither fast nor attend Friday prayer . In 1997 the regime faced a grave crisis of legitimacy. In the universities, the regime had been forced to hire Western-educated staff for lack of other qualified teachers. This ensured that an important institution of ideological control was not totally in the hands of the hard-liners. Teachers inspired by Western ideas about rule of law and democracy were allowed, by default, to influence the students (Brumberg 2001: 189). During Khomeini’s rule the literacy rate had more than doubled, especially dramatic was the female literacy rate. Half of the population was born after the revolution; they had never experienced Khomeini’s charismatic leadership, but instead encountered a state that failed to provide them with political and economical opportunities. Widespread higher education combined with economic stagnation furthered demands for more influence in politics. In addition to the growing middle class it also existed a relatively large class of capitalist entrepeneurs. In a state characterized by “crony capitalism”, dissatisfaction from those that are shut out from the economy is likely to arise. The potential for collective action was heightened by urbanisation. The structural setting bears connotations to both Barrrington Moore Jr`s bourgeois-led path to democracy and modernisation theory’s middle class-led development. Both factors are there; a large and vigorous middle class combined with limited political rights and a stagnated economy . For this reason, Western observers viewed Iran as one of the countries most likely to democratize in the near future (The Economist, January 2001).

But participation in elections remained low, and several sources reported about widespread political indifference in 1995 . This may have prompted the regime to allow Khatami to run for presidency. By letting a reform-minded soft-liner participate, they hoped to strengthen the impression of real elections with real alternatives. In this way the regime might generate more legitimacy and support. Their decision had unanticipated results: it managed to unite the reformist elites with the masses, creating a vigorous democratic movement. Guillermo O’Donnel and Phillippe Schmitter call this the ”resurrecting of civil society”. This may happen when certain ”exemplary” individuals voice the misgivings of the population, thus stimulating the populations political re-awakening (1986: 48-52).

The force the numerous student organizations embraced Khatami with an enthusiasm that may have proved frightening to the establishment. Despite being a member of the clergy himself, his message of democracy, reform and pluralism resonated in the crowds. Reform was no longer an intellectual exercise among the elites, but a very real option being celebrated in the streets, the reformist newspapers, television-shows, university campuses and Iranian living-rooms. Women and veiled school-girls could be seen handing out pamphlets and discussing with passers-by in cars and on foot. Mass-meetings were organized and democratic slogans were shouted in loud-speakers. Daniel Brumberg writes: ”In a country were the minimum voting age was sixteen, this explosion of enthusiasm among the young had profound, if not revolutionary, implications” (2001: 224).

But not only the young were involved. In seeing the support Khatami’s message generated, the disillusioned co-founders of the revolution gained courage. They consisted of not only Khatami’s generation, but also the ”grandfathers” of revolution. Khomeini’s concept of velayat-e faqih had been contested among the clerics from the start, but the dissidents had either been silenced or remained calm in fear of being persecuted. Now respected clerics like Ayatollah Montazeri went out in public criticising the lack of democracy, through this lending his authority to the reformists. Thus, the movement managed to unite both ”fathers, children and grand-children” of the revolution (Brumberg 2001) As stated, Khatami won by overwhelming majority, taking his reformist brothers and sisters with him in the following Majlis-election. For many, both Iranians and Western observers, this was believed to be the first stirring of a movement towards democracy. Why was this movement stalled?

What Happened to Freedom?
The Second of Khordad Front’s powerlessness vis-à-vis the conservatives has shown that the prospect of democratic change in Iran ultimately boils down to the need to curb the powers of the Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians. This appeared to be a tricky issue for Khatami. On the surface, he seemed reluctant to support his own constituency in the face of regime violence, and his repeated calls to remain calm, was interpreted by many as proof of his less-than-authentic wish to reform the state.

The first crack in the relationship between the reformist elite and the masses came in 1999. Reacting to the students support for Khatami, conservative legislators passed a bill that established a Basij in every university throughout Iran (payvand.com). A Basij is an Islamic student association designed to monitor political activity in the universities. As a response, the students organized massive demonstrations that were brutally beaten down. Many student leaders were murdered, and a mass of others arrested (and still remain imprisoned). The reformist politicians failed to come to the students ail, but supported instead the secret trials and the televised ”confessions” from the alleged ”riot” leaders. Khatami promoted patience and what he called ”active calm”. While claiming to look for justice, he accepted the show trials that found a handful of police officers guilty of misconduct. Afterwards, the student movement split in two, one part refusing to take part in official politics, the other part continuing to support Khatami. But all of the reformists key reform bills have been stopped by the Council of Guardians, from those trying to strengthen women’s rights to those seeking to curb the Councils powers. This has been accepted by the moderate reformists. There may also be a split in the Second of Khordad Front itself. After the banning of more than 3000 reformist candidates prior to the 2004 Majlis election, the faction led by Khatami’s brother called for a boycott, while Khatami and others warned against it. Thus, it is possible to make a distinction between moderate and more radical reformists. It seems that most Iranians now feel betrayed by the moderate Khatami ; he promised them freedom, and he failed to deliver.

The contradictions between the velayat-e faqih and democracy are complicated matters, and require a religio-philosophical approach to be properly exhausted . While this is beyond the scope of this enquiry, other approaches can be applied with interesting results. Khatami may have believed that he really could change the system from within, without changing the existing power structure. But the situation is more complicated than that. From a standpoint of transition theory, reformers in Iran face a difficult challenge: they must further the hopes of the liberal part of the population without creating a significant backlash from the conservative hard-liners. This is a challenge facing all reformers of authoritarian systems who have not undergone radical revolutions (Carothers 1987). The conservatives control the Judiciary, the Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary volunteer branch, and the Hezbollah, an armed civil organization functioning as the”morals police”. Sourosh and several others have been physically attacked or sentenced to death, students have been brutally murdered and dissidents jailed. In addition, the reformers still have the memory of their last attempt at reforms, which ended with the 1992 crack-down.

Schmitter likens such a situation to a game of chess. While playing the” democratic game”, players are under the constant threat of having the board kicked aside by non-democratic actors who watch from the sideline (1986: 65). The trick is clearly to avoid upsetting the hard-liners. In game-theoretic terms, it is possible that Khatami chose to cloak his real symphaties by appearing to side with the conservatives against his radical supporters during conflicts. Following this line, Khatami could also be in possession of more information than the others. By calling for patience and ”active calm”, by not supporting demonstrations and sit-ins, he may have avoided further bloodshed. It is beyond my capacity to guess what would had happened if the reformers had refused to accept Khamenei and the Council’s rulings, but two scenarios comes to mind. In the face of massive public uprising, the conservatives could have answered by letting loose the military and police forces on the population. It could soon generate into a brutal dictatorship. In the other scenario the regime would have decided against unleashing violence or the military would refuse to open fire, either case most likely resulting in regime break-down. Khatami has strived to avoid either one of these scenarios. He has never claimed to be a Gorbachev. Among the break-away student factions there is even talk of the whole hard-liner, soft-liner conflict being staged just to save the regime.


System Failure
Khatami’s reform agenda could have been more successful if he had managed to talk the hard-liners into accepting the necessity of reform. His fault lies in his faith in the ultimate wisdom of the religious authorities, trusting them to make the right decision. They did not. Many argue that this has proven beyond doubt that the velayat-e faqih in its current form is incompatible with democracy. The system is simply "input-resistant". In my opinion, the regime has emerged from the situation in a worsened state. Seen from a standpoint of negotiated transitions, the regime has not acted wisely, but instead demonstrated the need to remove them altogether. As a result, regime opposition has emerged as more radical than when it entered 1997. The goal is no longer reform, but radical transformation. The experience has also strengthened the extent of regime tension and factionalism, and through this increased its weakness. Even the mainstream soft-liners may prove to be radicalized, as Khatami’s harsh statements about conservative elements points to (aljazeera.com, Salam 24.04 2005). The intellectuals advocating the separation of church and state call themselves the Reformation movement. By announcing the death of the reformist movement and the advent of a new, they have taken the opposition to a new, more radical stage. Some call for a national election that should let the people´s choice determine the religious or secular nature of the state. The Reformation movement has yet to generate the popular upsurge Khatami did. But although the Iranians are disillusioned, the reform movement may yet prove

Learning Democracy
The disappointment following from Khatami’s failure and the hard-liner crack-down have demobilized the Iranian people. By retreating back into the private sphere they are reacting to the state’s intrusionary character. This “disengagement” from the state is a defensive strategy used by the civil society in many authoritarian regimes (Shue and Kholi1994:315). Further more, it is an event often seen following a period of intense popular mobilization . Popular movements fade away due to fatigue, repression or disillusionment (O’Donnel and Schmitter 1986: 48).

None the less, the events around The Second of Khordad Front demonstrated that democracy has an enormous potential for mobilization in Iran. While the revolution in 1978-79 was powered by anger, the campaigns in 1997 and 2001 were fuelled by the happy anticipation of freedom. The notion of the community of citizens has suffered a fierce attack, but for a few glorious moments it existed in a very real sense during the campaigns in 1997, 2000 and 2001. From a more pessimistic view the hard-liners have succeeded in separating the opposition elite from the mass, by rendering the opposition powerless to implement what they promised, thereby generating disappointment. But still, it can be argued that the experience has been a process of democracy ”learning” in which elite and mass acted together in pursuit of a common goal. An array of different opinions were for a brief moment aired, discussed and promoted in a show of the most vigorous civil society imaginable. Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian intellectual, writes that one of the most important effects have been “the spread of the language of democracy, not only among the young but throughout the population generally—no mean feat for a country with so long-established a tradition of authoritarianism (Journal of Democracy volume 14, number 1 2003: 128). Thus, the period from 1997 to around 2003 can be seen as an “educational campaign” in which the idea of democracy may have taken even stronger root in even larger segments of the population than previously. The bonds established between the democratic elites and the citizens might prove to be easy to revive, as well as the political identities of the activists. Previous experience with democracy, as well as democratic activity through associations, are known to be constructive for later democratic consolidation (Liv Tørres 2004:2). Dead or not, The Second of Khordad Front have left an imprint on the Iranian society.

Conclusion: Years of Struggle, Years of Growth
Several factors contributed to the rise of the reformist movement in Iran. As we saw in part two, “The Green Democrats”, both global and regional factors have contributed to what may prove to be an ideological shift within Islamist movements. On an institutional level, the Revolutionary Constitution created tensions between the elected government and the powerful institutions ruled by the clergy. In part three, I argued that these two different governments points to two competing conceptions of how the state should relate to the society. An analysis of the basic values informing the velayat-e faqih underlined this: the superior knowledge of the clergy commands obedience from the community of lambs. In contrast, the elected government depends on the accept from the capable and sovereign community of citizens.

The reform of the Constitution in 1989 opened the door to regime dissidents who saw the need to curb the clerical powers in favour of a more democratic society. The already existing tensions within the regime became more pronounced after a crack-down from the conservatives. This crack-down, as argued in part four, seems to have helped the otherwise divided dissidents to find common ground, and ultimately to unite behind Mohammad Seyid Khatami as Presidential candidate in 1997. By this time, the regime faced growing dissatisfaction from the Iranian people. A dramatic increase in birth-rates had created a society where 70 percent of the population were under 30 years. Urbanization, growing literacy and widespread higher education had made this generation into a highly critical and sophisticated crowd. In addition, a stagnated economy characterized by nepotism and corruption offered few opportunities. Part five tried to show how these structural factors contributed to the regime`s substantial lack of legitimacy, and therefore may have prompted the conservative Council of Guardians to let Khatami run for presidency. Khatami’s platform of democracy, reform and rule by law was embraced by large parts of the population, thereby uniting the elite and mass in a powerful reformist movement. But despite having the majority in both the executive and legislative branch, Khatami and his reformist allies encountered obstacles in the form of institutional (un)balance, as described in “What Happened To Freedom?”. The institutional powers of the faqih Ayatholla Khamenei and the Council of Guardians allowed them to veto any bills from the Majlis they judged to be contrary to Islam and the Constitution. Through their control over the judiciary, the police and the armed forces, the regime hard-liners orchestrated a new crack-down. This resulted in the closing of newspapers, arrestations, trials, violence and murders. The delicate balance between generating change and provoking a crack-down from hard-liners is a challenge facing most reformers in authoritarian systems. Following from this, it is possible to argue that Khatami was trying to avoid further bloodshed and suppression by calling for calm and patience from his agitated supporters.

The reformist politicians failure at actually implementing reform can perhaps be explained by the above. But what are the consequences following from this failure? The long-term results are hard to predict, but as stated in “System Failure”, several factors indicate that the regime opposition has been radicalised by the event. Although they are wary of violent confrontations, dissidents stress the need to dramatically alter the system. But will the Reformation movement manage to remobilize the population? The regime has clearly emerged with even less legitimacy than it started out with. Although the Iranians appear to be in a state of political apathy, I argue that the spread of democratic ideas during the reformist movement’s heyday have created a potential for remobilization. If and when this potential will be realised, remains to be seen.