Introduction

What keeps dictators up at night? Sources of adictator's anxiety include coups, foreigninterventions and revolutions. Dictators thereforework hard to nullify all these threats through thecreation of institutions and the implementation ofmultiple preventive policies. In the early 2000s,coloured revolutions with civil society at theircore overthrew some of the dictators in EasternEurope and Central Asia. Middle Eastern dictators,for their part, seemed to have been successful inimmunising their regimes by suppressing civilsociety organisations. However, since 2009, ordinarypeople, starting with the 2009 Iranian GreenMovement, followed by the 2011 Arab uprisings andthe Gezi protests in Turkey in 2013, have defiedthese dictators. While these protests were notentirely successful in overthrowing thedictatorships in many of these countries, theychallenged the assumption of authoritariansurvivability in the Middle East and North Africa(MENA).

In response to these protests, authoritarian MENAregimes have upgraded their survival strategies. Inaddition to suppressing active opposition anddistracting apolitical groups, they learned the needto actively organise and mobilise their own socialbases, securing their loyalty through patron–clientnetworks and mobilising them against their enemies.While the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), as arevolutionary populist regime, has relied on massmobilisation since 1979, it was only after 2009 thatit started to cohere and mobilise its supportersmore aggressively by creating what I call a ‘deepsociety’. Since 1979, the Islamic Republic hasgradually lost its legitimacy among citizens andalienated several social and political groups. As acounter-strategy to the growth of internalopposition, the regime has transformed the IslamicRevolutionary Guard's corps (IRGC)'s civil militiabranch – the Basij – into a deep society. Throughthis civilian mass organisation, the IRI hasrecruited and organised more than 2 million Iraniansfrom different social strata and professions. Theregime also uses deep society to share the rent andco-opt Iranians, especially youth, to become part ofthe regime. For its members, being part of thiscommunity means having more opportunities andprivileges in all aspects of life, includingeducation and career. Deep society also helps theregime to put Iranians who are effectively growingmore dissatisfied under its gaze.