I would not usually take note of an Iranian government minister–in this case the minister of agriculture–being subjected to a no-confidence motion, and surviving. But this story, from The Peninisular On-line (Qatar) is a reminder that Iran is a bit more complex than typically understood in the ‘West’.
Lawmakers who sought to unseat Mohammad Reza Eskandari mustered 98 votes, falling short of the required simple majority of the 247 MPs who voted, state radio reported. Parliament has 290 seats. [in other words, it failed by 26 votes--MSS]
Some members of parliament, which is dominated by the Abadgaran faction that backed Ahmadinejad’s presidential bid last year, have become increasingly critical of the government, particularly its failure to rein in rising prices.
The debate was broadcast live on state radio, and takes place in a context of upcoming elections.
Political bickering has been mounting ahead of December elections to a powerful clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, which has the power to dismiss the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Local council polls will be held at the same time.
Khamenei, Iran’s highest authority, told officials this month to stop criticising the government in public [evidently without effect--MSS].
The Assembly of Experts is indeed directly elected by the voters, though, as with all elected posts in Iran, the candidates must be vetted by the Council of Guardians, made up of senior clerics elected by the Experts. I have seen news reports that the vetting process for Experts candidates is itself a campaign issue for the upcoming elections.
Some months ago, Ahmadinejad failed in several attempts to get his oil minister confirmed by parliament, before finally settling on a compromise candidate. And this was the second attempted no-confidence motion in one of his ministers, although the other did not reach a vote.
No, Iran is not a democracy. But it is also not the tyranny that most Americans, Europeans, and Israelis presumably imagine it to be.
Look at Freedom House’s report on Iran:
It’s get a 6 for Political Rights and 6 for Civil Liberties and is classified as Not Free.
Iran according to Freedom House has very limited religious freedom.
“Religious freedom is limited in Iran, which is largely Shiite Muslim with a small Sunni Muslim minority. Shiite clerics who dissent from the ruling establishment are frequently harassed. Sunnis enjoy equal rights under the law, but there are some indications of discrimination, such as the absence of a Sunni mosque in Tehran and the paucity of Sunnis in senior government offices. The constitution recognizes Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians as religious minorities and generally allows them to worship without interference so long as they do not proselytize. However, they are barred from election to representative bodies (though a set number of parliamentary seats are reserved for them), cannot hold senior government or military positions, and face restrictions in employment, education, and property ownership. Some 300,000 Baha’is, Iran’s largest non-Muslim minority, enjoy virtually no rights under the law and are banned from practicing their faith. Hundreds of Baha’is have been executed since 1979. In February, a military officer was discharged and sentenced to three years in prison for “deceiving the armed forces” about his conversion to Christianity.”
Iran is a theocracy or theocratic influence government with a limited parliament.
Although one good thing about Iran. Iran has produced very good movies of late despite the extremely restricted enviroment and subjects that the filmmakers can explore. It is ironic that artists have to be creative to get around censorship restrictions.
Seed planted by Suaprazzodi — 26 October 2006 @ 15:32
As I said, Iran is not a democracy. But few of the other countries that Freedom House scores at 6 or 7 (the worst ranks) have electoral and parliamentary processes of any sort. Freedom House is a worthwhile organization. It does not, however, engage in comparative political analysis, and its measures are (necessarily) blunt.
The nature of a regime’s internal political process presumably matters for such questions as to how (or if) it might transform itself and foreign-policy questions like whether the only way to get the target country’s policies to change is to go to war with it. And the need to make electoral appeals within such a narrow constituency likely explains some of the “ratcheting up” phenomenon that we see in the rhetoric of the current president.
Freedom House won’t help much with such questions.
Seed planted by MSS — 26 October 2006 @ 15:46
Iran: Voting for Experts
Iran is an authoritarian regime, not a democracy. Yet it holds regular semi-competitive elections, and there are numerous public conflicts between elected officials (such as the no-confidence votes that I have written about before). But what is the Assembly of Experts, and how important is it? The answer to the question of importance is impossible to answer without considering how “institutionalized” Iran’s authoritarian regime is. Institutionalization–whether of a democracy or an authoritarian regime–means broadly the extent to which regular rules and procedures are followed for choosing top leaders and making policy decisions. Institutionalization, however, has somewhat ambiguous effects on authoritarian regimes. In democracies, institutionalization implies flexibility and responsiveness to popular opinion, inasmuch as the rules of democracy connect leadership choice and policy-making to public opinion via competitive elections. The more the rules of electoral democracy are followed, the more responsive the political system should be (holding constant the many variations that often consume the space of this blog in terms of how public preferences are translated through elections and institutions in democracies).
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 19 December 2006 @ 12:59