What Are Iran's Chances of Democratic Transformation?

There is a vibe in Iran that feels different this time.  It isn't like the failed Green Revolution in 2009.  That was just an attempt to get the government to respect the results of an election.  It was put down, but the protesters lived to fight another day -- they contested the next election and won.

And it isn't like the protests up till now, which have been mostly economic.

This is a aimed at the government in all aspects.  The government is apologizing and begging for forgiveness.  This has the feel of 1979.

It could also be crushed.  Gaming out a democratic transformation now could be the classic case of counting your chickens before they are hatched.

But if this current revolt does overthrow the Iranian government, what are the chances that it will make a real democratic transformation? 

As a preliminary matter, revolutions are extremely dangerous, for two reasons at least.  One is that a revolution means the destruction of the state.  When you destroy the state, it leaves a power vacuum to be filled.  Whatever fills that vacuum is unlikely to be nice.

The other reason is that, even if a revolution manages to set up a functioning state on the quick, people who stood united in opposing the old government can have very different ideas about what should take its place.

A few things offer promise.  One is that, bad as the Iranian government is, it is not on the same scale as Iraq under Saddam Hussein or Libya under Qaddafi (or Saudi Arabia, for that matter).  It allows some limited dissent and contested elections -- with candidates approved the the ayatollahs, and with a theocracy/secret police holding much of the real power and the elective government's power strictly limited. But still, there are contested elections and not the one-candidate elections one sees in a one-party state.

I have long dismissed the importance of a democratic facade when the real power lies elsewhere.  But reading an article (one I can no longer find, that doubtless white washes the Iranian government), I did see how even a democratic facade might have some value.  Iranians, the presumed whitewash article said, talk freely about politics.  When you start discussing the subject, everyone else wants to join in.  They frequently disagree and argue.  All of this suggests that maintaining the democratic facade might be useful training for a real democracy.  It teaches people that government is their business, and that disagreement is normal and acceptable.  If the lesson sinks in, this could be immensely useful.

Or, in the words of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, maintaining the facade of democracy may have brought Iran to the point where:

[A] substantial number of citizens think of themselves as participants in society's decision-making and not simply as subjects bound by its laws. Moreover, leaders of all major sectors of the society must agree to pursue power only by legal means, must eschew (at least in principle) violence, theft, and fraud, and must accept defeat when necessary. They must also be skilled at finding and creating common ground among diverse points of view and interests, and correlatively willing to compromise on all but the most basic values.

Finally, we should give some thought to Daniel Zimblatt.  Zimblatt's sobering warnings is that democratic breakthroughs, however inspiring, rarely bode well for the future.  That is because the "people" who are triumphant during a democratic breakthrough invariably turn out to be only part of the people.  The old forces of the status quo have not vanished; they are merely in temporary eclipse and will return.  The most successful democratic transitions are ones that take place quietly and without drama. 

By Zimblatt's analysis, the key to whether Iran can  make a successful democratic transformation is whether it develops a solid democratic conservative party.  And by a democratic conservative party, he means one representing the pre-democratic status quo of power and the old ruling class.  Only if the old ruling elite can find ways build an electoral appeal, develop a vested interest in democratic institutions, and learn (eventually) to accept defeat and how to act as a loyal opposition.  If permanently shut out of power, the ruling elite has the resources to break the democracy and create a new, less open and less flexible kind of dictatorship.*

In the case of Iran, the old ruling class that must somehow be incorporated into a new democracy and find a way to act as a democratic conservative party are the clerical theocracy, and the Revolutionary Guards (i.e., the organization lead by Soleimani).  What are the chances?**

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*This also means giving amnesties to a lot of people who don't deserve them simply because they are powerful enough to make trouble given the chance.  This is certainly unjust and creates a lot of resentment, but it is preferable to the alternative.
**And in the case of Iran, another factor is at work -- the United States.  Will we lift the sanctions (at least to some degree) or won't we?  It is not hard to imagine that if the new Iranian government gives amnesty to the worst members of Soleimani's organization and tries to find a place for it in the new order, the answer will be no.  And Iran will be given an intolerable ultimatum -- tear yourself apart getting rid of this organization, or have your economy crushed forever.