The Islamic Republic's Pillar
Why the 13 million who voted for Jalili will continue to rule Iran
Despite holding the Islamic Republic in a chokehold in recent years, the Khameneist-Islamist1 faction has achieved little beyond maintaining Iran’s autopilot trajectory into decline and potential collapse. Although in command of essentially all state institutions, this faction has no vision for a political project beyond cannibalizing other groups. And with the domestic left+liberals in various intellectual dead-ends and the diaspora too busy cashing in on Iran social movements; the horizon was bleak. Then came the deus ex machina. Out of nowhere, President Raisi was dead.
Some prescient analysts immediately sensed the opportunity. With dissatisfaction running high (even in the IRI’s social base), there was a possibility that the Khameneist-Islamist elite might ‘course correct’ and allow someone like Ali Larijani to become President. The foreclosure of this possibility, through the rejection of Larijani’s candidacy, makes the eventual outcome all the more shocking. Even with their ranks severely depleted (and arguably never too stellar in the first place), Masoud Pezeshkian is one of the least charismatic (and maybe least qualified) reformist politicians in Iran. Iranian Kremlinology is difficult – but the prevailing theory is that Pezeshkian was allowed to run as part of a master plan to raise turnout. A more likely explanation is the Guardian Council’s longstanding preference for qualifying an occasional reformist or centrist; if deemed sufficiently loyal and unproblematic. Individuals like Mahmoud Sadeghi or Javad Zarif are too hostile to the Khameneist-Islamist elite, while someone like Larijani is too threatening.
Despite his shortcomings, Masoud Pezeshkian still prevailed. Though much can be said about Pezeshkian’s unexpected victory, the most important data point from the election is the vote total for the conservative candidates, representing different wings of the Khameneist-Islamist elite. Together, Ghalibaf and Jalili received just under thirteen million votes. Although turnout increased by ~25%2 in the runoff, the conservative vote (now wholly represented by Jalili) only increased by 5%. With 45% of the vote in an election with 50% turnout à the conservative bloc forms about 22.5% of the electorate.
Put simply, the Khameneist-Islamist social base is just over 1/5 of the Iranian electorate. Many commentators have pointed out that this bodes poorly for this faction’s future. I’m not so sure.
In understanding the Islamic Republic, it is critical to appreciate that it’s not the loyalist-velayati thirteen million versus nearly fifty million other Iranians – but the loyalist thirteen million against zero.
What is a social bloc?
The Islamist base of the IRI is a coherent social bloc. For a social bloc to form and cohere, there must be some means by which individuals can cooperate beyond their family or immediate social context. More broadly, for even a state to operate at a scale beyond a single community, the politics of that state necessarily require ways by which individuals who do not know each other can come to cooperate. Various institutions can perform this scaling function. But the underlying life-force for any such institution is repeating interactions. Even without resorting to formal game theory, the necessity of repeating interactions is intuitive. Interactions must repeat in order for you to meet someone, to incentivize cooperation between you3, to build predictability in your relations – all of which are necessary at larger scales in order to build institutions.
The basis of the Islamist social bloc is the most powerful vector for repeating interactions in Iranian society: the mosque. The power of a mosque as a social force is that it is an anchor for predictable repeating interactions: every Friday for namaz jama’at. From these predictable repeating interactions comes cooperation, which results in hierarchy, specialization and division of labor at scale, risk-sharing and planning, the recognition and development of human capital, and the emergence of a common subjectivity and understanding of a common collective interest. These various structures are fortified by the familial ties and marriages which emerge through this chain of repeating interactions.
The power of Khomeinism (not Khameneism!) was to forge these local nodes into a common social bloc through effective political organizing. Other groups in pre-1979 attempted similar models of organizing, centered on different vectors, but were blocked by brutal state suppression. Backed with state resources, Iran’s Islamists have become a social pillar embedded with recurring hierarchies that span essentially every community in Iran.
An entire sub-society has been built on top of this bedrock of repeating interactions. The IRI has effectively pillarised a subset of Iranian Shias into an Islamist social base, successfully disarticulating the development of alternative social pillars, and used the Islamist base to conquer and wield state power. This Islamist base is a society unto itself – with its own media, social welfare institutions (formal and informal), political parties, and patronage networks. This pillarization is not always obvious because some Islamist institutions, tailored to the interest of this sub-society, also double as national institutions (IRIB and the IRGC are notable examples).
Other Social Blocs
The Islamist social bloc, standing at just over 1/5th of the population, is the largest social bloc in the country. No other group comes close. Outside of this sub-society, what are the largest pools of repeating interactions? Probably universities and very large workplaces (like mines and big factories). No surprise then that universities and large workplaces are the most common sites of anti-IRI political contestation. But these vectors have not coalesced into sustainable social blocs – mostly due to political repression. The IRI is not good at much – but it does have a well-honed skillset for ‘handling’ student and worker organizing.
Outside of the big cities, the most important vectors for repeating interactions are probably tribal networks. Unlike students and workers, tribal networks have stable hierarchies. Consequently, the Islamic Republic generally avoids antagonizing tribes. These networks are able to participate in insider bargaining and thereby protect their interests (at least in whatever way tribal leaders understand the collective group interest to be).
What next? What are the largest pools of repeating social interactions after universities, mines, big factories, and tribes? The most likely answers are affinity groups like university alumni associations, sports and arts clubs, and even more informal social groups. These affinity groups have failed to constitute themselves as social blocs because their vectors of repeating interactions are too unpredictable and their domains too limited.
Big Picture
Overall, there is no social bloc that can rival the Islamist pillar in size or resources. The fifty million Iranians outside of this bloc may be critical of the Islamic Republic; but they are critical as individuals – and individuals are not the relevant unit of politics (unless one is extremely wealthy). Non-oligarch individuals are not the subjects of political life but its objects. Though elections can obfuscate this basic reality, political contestation is not American Idol – it is not the simple aggregation of individual preferences.
Iranians outside of this social bloc must build vectors of repeating interactions, and eventually sustainable institutions on the basis of those interactions. Without this, they can never compete politically against the Islamist base. This is true even if a foreign army came to destroy the IRI and occupy Iran.
However, there is potential. This is especially so because the Islamic Republic is a capitalist country – with a large proportion of social life organized privately. The IRI is wise to the subversive power of unions, student organizations, and dissident mosques – but generally apathetic to other vectors of repeating interactions.
What about Pezeshkian?
Politics in the Islamic Republic is unwieldy because of the irreconcilable nature of these two facts:
(1) the Islamist pillar is the largest and most powerful social bloc.
(2) when given the opportunity in Presidential elections, a large proportion of Iranians outside the Islamist pillar continue to vote against this bloc.
Pezeshkian won because of the (rapidly aging) proportion of anti-IRI Iranians who continue to vote + his ability to win over a proportion of the Islamist base.4 As the old reformist base dies out, the electoral path to power of reformists and other IRI critics will also die out.
It is interesting (and scary) to think what will happen if the current equilibrium holds: with the Islamist pillar wielding hegemonic power but consistently losing the Presidency. Something will have to give. If anti-IRI Iranians fail to form coherent social blocs, a likely alternative is that the Islamic Republic begins to move away from universal suffrage.
I should caution that ‘Khameneist’ is perhaps a misleading label. Others have used the term ‘Islamist elite’ but I find it over-inclusive.
Or 10 percentage points.
You are more likely to cooperate with someone when you are likely to interact with them repeatedly in the future. If you are cooperative, then they can reciprocate (which is to your advantage). Alternatively, non-cooperative behavior can result in them imposing costs on you in the future.
Although I refer to the thirteen million who voted for Jalili, it should be noted that the bloc is likely larger. After all, Raisi won nearly 16 million votes in 2017.
An enlightening read - thank you. Glad to see you've started a Substack as your twitter is always insightful. Will be sure to read whatever you write next.