The Role of Events and Power Struggle in Shaping the Islamic Political Order in Post-Revolutionary Iran

How was the political order formed in Iran after the ۱۹۷۹ revolution? The dominant narrative emphasizes that this order arose from the Islamic nature of the Iranian revolution and was the most natural order possible. In contrast, there is another narrative that considers the order to be the result of the power struggle in the post-revolutionary space. By designing a simple theoretical model, the present article analyzes the role of the ideological field, political and social events, and the actions of rival groups in the formation of the post-revolutionary political order, and therefore attempts to present a new reading of the second narrative. Based on the findings of this research, in the ideological (space) field after the revolution, there was a relative balance of power and no group could dominate its ideas alone and at once. According to this research, each event led to the formation of a coalition of supporters and opponents, and the conflict between these two coalitions played a fundamental role in the formation of the post-revolutionary political order. Also, these coalitions were not fixed; that is, they changed with each event. Meanwhile, the jurisprudential Islamists, through temporary alliances with other rivals; institution-building - such as the establishment of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Revolutionary Council, and the Islamic Republic Party - and ultimately closeness to Imam Khomeini, gradually transformed their ideas - such as the Islamic Republic, the principle of Velayat al-Faqih, and the fundamentalist Islamization of Iranian society - into the hard core of the post-revolutionary Iranian political order, while the ideological differences between the leftists (Marxists) and the nationalists were so fundamental that they could not even have common ideas. Although at the beginning of the revolution, the nationalists and Islamic liberals collaborated with the jurisprudential Islamists, they did not succeed in introducing any ideas into the hard core of the political order. On the other hand, the leftists achieved success in one case; namely, they succeeded in transforming the idea of ​​fighting imperialism and anti-Westernism into part of the hard core of the political order.

کلیدواژه ها:

Political Order ، Iranian Revolution of ۱۹۷۹ ، Jurisprudential Islamists ، power struggle ، Events ، Coalition ، Institutionalization