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ABSTRACT
The article analyses Ali Khamenei’s discourse on insiders and outsiders in the Islamic Republic of Iran, arguing that it shows the leader of an electoral revolutionary regime striving to counter elite fragmentation and growing democratic demands. It studies identity demarcation as a tool of autocratic legitimation. In a political system where the possibility to access political positions depends on supporting a belief-system, all cadres share a basic identity, which rulers can exploit to draw boundaries between “us” and “them”. The analysis reveals how Iran’s leader capitalizes on the existence of an insider-outsider divide to promote ideas about an imagined “we” of the regime. The “we” is portrayed as an Islamic we, fully committed to his rule. The article maintains that Khamenei developed this discourse in response to the challenge of the Iranian reform movement. It analyses, first, the context in which the discourse emerged and, second, the discursive strategy itself, to substantiate the claim. It concludes that the discourse had two essential aims in the containment (1997–2003) and crushing (2009–2010) of the pro-democracy reformist and Green movements: to de-legitimate Khamenei’s opponents through othering and to legitimate the counter-mobilization of repressive agents.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Iver B. Neumann and two anonymous reviewers for comments to this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Beetham, “Liberal Democracy,” 40.
2. Dukalskis and Gershewski, “What Autocracies Say.”
3. See for instance Backes and Kailitz, Ideocracies in Comparison; Dukalskis, The Authoritarian Public Sphere; Schlumberger, “Opening Old Bottles”; Lorch and Bunk, “Using Civil Society.”
4. See Burnell, “Autocratic Opening”; Grauvogel and Von Soest, “Claims to Legitimacy Count.”
5. See Barker, Legitimating Identities.
6. See von Haldenwang, “The Relevance of Legitimation”; von Soest and Grauvogel, “Identity, Procedures and Performance.”
7. As defined by Levitsky and Way, “The Durability of Revolutionary Regimes.”
8. Chehabi, “The Political Regime.”
9. Levitsky and Way, “Beyond Patronage.”
10. Jowitt, The Leninist Extinction.
11. Jowitt, “Inclusion and Mobilization.”
12. Levitsky and Way, “The Durability of Revolutionary Regimes.”
13. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule.
14. Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars of Stability.”
15. See Pepinsky, “The Institutional Turn.”
16. Walzer, “A Theory of Revolution.”
17. Furet, Penser la Révolution Française.
18. Best, “Marx or Mosca?”; Voslensky, Nomenklatura; Walzer, “A Theory of Revolution.”
19. See Abrahamian, “Tortured Confessions.”
20. Kailitz and Stockemer, “Regime Legitimation.”
21. See Mouffe, On the Political; Tilly, “Social Boundary Mechanisms”; Laclau, New Reflections.
22. Hudson, Arab Politics, 2.
23. Neumann, Uses of the Other.
24. See Lebas, From Protests to Parties.
25. See Robin, Fear.
26. See Alem, “Electoral Politics.”
27. Author’s interview with Majid Mohammadi, 5 September 2011 and Fatemeh Haghighatjou, 9 September 2011.
28. Moslem, Factional Politics.
29. Brumberg, Reinventing Khomeini.
30. See Shahibzadeh, Islamism and Post-Islamism.
31. Khosrokhavar, “The New Intellectuals.”
32. Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, “From Etelāʿāti to Eslāhtalabi.”
33. See Kamrava, Iran’s Intellectual Revolution.
34. Boroujerdi and Rahimkhani, “The Office of the Supreme Leader.”
35. Arjomand, After Khomeini.
36. Such as Kiyan, Jame’e, Rahbord and Salam.
37. Author’s interview with Ali Afshari, 7 September 2011.
38. Wilson, “Political Discourse,” 787.
39. Hovsepian-Bearce, The Political Ideology; Mohd Don and May, “The Discursive Representation”; Sadjapour; “Reading Khamenei.”
40. khamenei.ir.
41. “Speech in Meeting with Officials and Technocrats of the Regime.” Accessed 26 February 2017. http://www.leader.ir/fa/speech/402.
42. “Statement in Meeting with a Group of Revolutionary Guardsmen.” Accessed 26 February 2017. http://farsi.khamenei.ir/print-content?id=2651.
43. “Statement in Friday Prayer.” Accessed 26 February 2017. http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=2962.
44. “Statement in Tehran Friday Prayer.” Accessed 26 February 2017. http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=3002.
45. “Tehran Friday Prayer.” Accessed 26 February 2017. http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=8033.
46. “On the Meaning of Khūdi and Ghayr-i Khūdi.” Accessed 26 February 2017. http://farsi.khamenei.ir/others-note?id=8684.
47. Wodak and Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, 73.
48. Machiavelli. The Prince, 18.
49. Keen, Faces of the Enemy, 18.
50. Laclau, New Reflections, 17.
51. Keen, Faces of the Enemy, 19.
52. Sheikholeslami, “The Transformation of Iran’s Political Culture.”
53. Walzer, “A Theory of Revolution.”
54. See Ostovar, Vanguard of the Imam; and Golkar, Captive Society.
55. “Statement in Meeting with the People of Qom.” Accessed 11 September 2017. http://farsi.khamenei.ir/print-content?id=31906.
56. Kailitz, “Classifying Political Regimes Revisited.”
57. Holbig, “Ideology After the End of Ideology.”
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Kjetil Selvik
Kjetil Selvik's research focuses on the sources of authoritarian resilience in Iran and the Arab world. His articles have appeared in journals like Comparative Sociology, World Development, International Journal of Middle East Studies and Middle East Journal.