Theoretical explanation of the difficulty of institutionalizing political power in contemporary Iran

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• Rohollah Eslami ¹
• Alireza Sahraie ²

¹ Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

² PhD student, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

10.22067/jhistory.2025.92143.1364

Abstract

In shaping the modern political legal system, Iranians made many efforts to limit and legalize power; but they have failed in constitutionalization. With the occurrence of the Constitutional Revolution and the drafting of the Constitution, the formation of the National Consultative Assembly, it was expected that the government and governance in Iran would become "constitutional"; but the chaos resulting from the revolution caused the suspension of constitutionalism. With the coming to power of Reza Khan and the subsidence of chaos in the provinces and the establishment of an order based on absolutism, the fundamental problem of constitutionalization of power remained unresolved. The possibility and refusal of constitutionalization. The author used the conceptual system of “exception and suspension” to analyze the difficulty of constitutionalizing political power (chaos and absolute) in the political history of contemporary Iran and, using causal explanation, has explained the issue of suspension of constitutionality and the dominance of exception during the late Qajar and early Pahlavi periods. The present article shows that the internal structures of suspension and exception and the conceptual system of the state of exception are an appropriate theoretical answer to the question of why political power in Iran was not limited and conditioned.

Keywords

• Iran
• constitutionalism
• becoming conditional
• exception
• suspension

Main Subjects

• Political History of Islam

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