Muhammad Khatami’s Reforms in Iran from the Perspective of Transitology and the Outlook for Democratic Change

Abstract

On May 23, 1997, a victory of Muhammad Khatami in the presidential election in the Islamic Republic of Iran started a brief period of liberalization in the country long mired in a repressive and authoritarian political regime. The new government loosened the restrictions imposed on the public space, widened the scope of some civil liberties and under the slogans of “religious democracy”, “rule of law” and “participation” aroused expectations of a further political change. Nevertheless these expectations were futile and the widely popular reform movement was stifled by a repression on the part of the conservative core of the regime. This study attempts to analyze these events as a failed attempt to democratic transition, leaning on the theory of Guillermo O’Donnell and Philipe Schmitter. It demonstrates that the transitive period under Khatami’s presidency followed the typical path of the disintegration of the post-World War II authoritarian regimes, which usually begins by the split within the governing elite of the régime itself and proceed through gradual and contingent introduction of liberalizing and democratizing reforms by its “soft-liner”. On this basis it attempts to capture the overall dynamic of the transitive process, define its turning points, identify the causes of its ultimate successful obstruction by the “hard-line” conservatives and derive from this experience implications for a possibility of democratic change in future.