Once again, a reformist electoral victory has been followed by political setbacks. The key to understanding this paradoxical pattern lies in the unique theocratic constitutional structure of the Islamic Republic.
About the Authors
Ladan Boroumand
Ladan Boroumand is honorary professor of history at the University of Parma and cofounder and board member of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran. She is currently writing a book whose working title is The Islamic Republic’s War on Iranians, and How America Got Caught in It.
Roya Boroumand, a historian from Iran with a doctorate from the Sorbonne, is a specialist in Iran’s contemporary history and has been a consultant for Human Rights Watch.
Four excerpts from the Iranian press-on elections and democracy and on religious intolerance and intellectual pluralism-suggest the extent to which democratic thinking has gained a foothold in Iran.
The uneasy accommodation of competing visions of authority that has characterized Iran’s political system since 1979 is a familiar phenomenon in the Middle East and elsewhere.
