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6 - The Rocky Path from Elections to Democracy

from Part III - Blocking Local Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2022

Kian Tajbakhsh
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

Chapter 6 first examines contention over the scope of local political representation. Covering the six rounds of city council elections from the first in 1999 to the sixth in 2021, the chapter shows how candidates and parties have been prevented from participating in city council elections through formal and informal processes of disqualification. It also shows how central government supervision and national administrative law constrains the range of local legislation the city councils can pass. I also show that the intergovernmental system is highly regulated and that central government-appointed representatives have broad power over elected officials at the province, district, city, and village level. This chapter concludes by pointing to the mixed legacy of the local electoral and political system created in 1999. On the one hand, central government bureaucracy and national-level laws blocked municipal governments from passing local legislation on most issues or raise the revenue necessary for fulfilling their legal mandates. For example, the first Tehran City Council failed to pass a Tehran Municipal Charter enshrining greater democratic rights for local civil society and autonomy vis-á-vis central government. On the other hand, elected local government became institutionalized as a coherent but subordinate component of the Islamic state. Within these narrow limits, thousands of creative and dedicated municipal councilors and employees did their best to represent their local constituencies and manage their cities.

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Chapter
Information
Creating Local Democracy in Iran
State Building and the Politics of Decentralization
, pp. 155 - 183
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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