Transition to Democracy for Iran - Part 1: A Fair and Just System of Social Cooperation
What is EXACTLY that Iranians protesting against the Islamic Republic Regime want - whichever group, region, leaning or ethnicity they belong to? And what is it that opposition political groups SHOULD want? What should our goal be? What should we work towards?
One hears “freedom”, “equality”, “distributing the oil income” and such, but none of these clearly describe a method of governing. In the end, all of these different answers that each person has, can be related to the simple idea that people want to be happy and to have a good life. Happiness is subjective, it can mean different things for different people. E.g.
- Maybe to a person in the city of Oroumieh happiness is stopping the lake from drying up.
- Maybe to a person in Khoozestan happiness is having enough drinkable water.
- Maybe to a woman happiness is not being forced to wear a black veil in the heat of summer.
- Maybe to a person in Kordestan happiness is having the freedom to make political decisions for their hometown.
- Maybe for a person it is important to protect the wildlife.
- Maybe it’s the opportunity to travel around the world and see different countries.
- Maybe it’s the access to free internet and to any book to gather knowledge.
- Maybe it’s the freedom to go to a disco and dance.
The Four Pillars of Civil Life
A government can’t force you to be happy. What makes you happy depends on your own preferences and wishes. The job of a good government is to provide the necessary infrastructure, the foundation and the basis for a society, so that every citizen has the fair opportunity to achieve a high quality of life. Thousands of years of human civilization, over 250 years of experience with modern democracy and over 70 years of detailed research result in a simple general solution for this problem: The permanent objective of a political regime must be to ensure a fair and just system of social cooperation among the people.
This is how people will achieve a high quality of life. In order to enable a fair and just system of social cooperation, the four pillars of a nation must be developed and protected. These are
1) politics,
2) the economy,
3) the society, and
4) the environment.
Politics: No free or independent political party exists in Iran today. We have no freedom of press, no freedom of opinion, and no freedom of speech. The political system is completely closed and it is getting worse every year. The IR regime has completely failed in developing Iran’s politics despite all the rosy promises made by the previous and the current supreme leader about a fulfilling life, a republic and a government that serves the people.
Economy: the last 15 years of the Pahlavi regime saw a stable and healthy economic development. If the Islamic revolution hadn’t happened, Iran’s economy would today be larger than South Korea’s, it would be as large as Spain’s. The volume of Spain’s economy was 2200 bn. USD last year. Iran’s economy was 240 bn. USD. That is smaller than 12%. Our economy would have been 8 times larger today, we would have been 8 times richer. The IR regime has completely failed in developing Iran’s economy, especially based on the potential due to access to cheap energy.
Society: Men and women are not equal in the eyes of the current laws in Iran. Women are strongly discriminated against, so are ethnicities and minorities. Many young men and women are taught to hate other religious groups or minorities. There is no justice for the average person. The regime justifies lying, stealing and conflict through ideology. The IR regime has completely failed in developing Iran’s society so that people would be handled equally and fairly in every aspect of their lives.
Environment: Many of Iran’s lakes and rivers are drying up, while criminal organizations develop water-intensive products for export. Several unique species of wildlife in Iran have gone extinct in the past 40 years, the endangered ones are not being protected. Air, water and soil pollution is not prevented or even regulated and it has been affecting public health for a long time. Natural resources are abused for short-time and limited financial profit of a few, while the average citizen doesn’t have access to sufficient drinking water. The IR regime has completely failed in protecting and developing Iran’s natural environment so that humans, animals and plants can live in harmony and benefit from each other. Instead the regime abuses every resource available and damages not just the environment but the population as well.
The result of this lack of development can be seen from the following examples:
- Over 50 million Iranians have a low quality of life because they are poor. Some struggle to even have enough food. Wealth doesn’t mean money, it means having things of value to use for your life: sufficient food and water, a home to live in, clean clothes (a washing machine), etc.
- Many young people in Iran are unhappy because they see no good job opportunities, and because of that, no hope for a good future, especially for women. The IR regime has not developed the Iranian industry and job market to ensure that younger people can have fulfilling jobs.
- Women see life as unfair and unjust because they are systematically discriminated against and are considered inferior to men in many aspects.
- Many ethnic minorities can’t achieve their desired system of social cooperation because they feel they have no power in political decision making, even in their own cities. Political decisions are made for them without paying attention to their costumes, their traditions and their needs.
- But the most important reason why most Iranians don’t feel happy is because they have very little freedom in any aspect. No political freedoms and very little social, economic, religious or personal freedoms. For a detailed report on the status of freedoms in Iran, refer to the website of Freedom House (linked under references).
The Idea of Good Governance
If we want to have freedoms, economic welfare, justice and quality, in short if we want to have a chance at a good life, we need a government that develops the economy and the society and protects the environment. In order for that to happen, the government needs to develop politics. Of course, a dictatorship doesn’t feel it has to do that. Because a dictator does not require the approval of the population to rule. He wasn’t elected by the population and his access to power doesn’t depend on the next election. So he sees no real reason to bother solving the problems of the population. This is especially true, if the dictator has access to resources that make him independent of tax income. In Iran’s case, this is the rent from the petrochemical industries.
Worldwide experience has shown that most dictatorships do not work efficiently in developing and protecting the four major aspects of a nation. The longer they rule, the less they develop. The case of the IR regime is the absolute worst: All four aspects have been either in decline or are strongly behind their potential. And the only way it is guaranteed that all four of these would be developed, is to have an institutionalized democracy. Only a democracy can guarantee that all aspects are always being developed.
Institutionalized Democracy
Freedom, especially political freedom, is required to achieve a democracy. But freedom is not a matter of 0% or 100%, „have“ or „not have“. It can have values between 0% and 100%. A well established system uses 25 variables in 5 different categories to determine the health of the freedoms in a country. The Freedom House uses this system to evaluate the degree of freedom in each country. They have been doing this for decades and their database is a wealth of useful knowledge for any person. Many might be surprised to find out that for example Saudi Arabia generally scores lower than Iran on this scale. The reason for surprise is that Saudi Arabia has a much more positive and polished image in the Western media. This goes to show that we should not take „news“ and „opinion pieces“ at face value and should not consider them always as honest and unbiased. Freedom House’s 2022 report on Iran is nonetheless a sad and dark piece, but it should provide us with a good idea, as to what it takes to actually get to an institutionalized democracy, and more importantly, how to keep it.
What does “institutionalized democracy” actually mean? We start with the example of Afghanistan. When we look back at the year 2000, the Taliban was ruling over Afghanistan. In 2001 the US invaded, kicked the Taliban out and put a “democratic” government in power. In 2021, the US left and the Taliban came back to power immediately.
How did that last part happen and why? In 2020 Afghanistan had, at least on the surface, everything you would want for the country: there were voting, women were free to go to school, banking was open with all the world, they had import and export, the country had normal relations with the western world. How come the Taliban came directly back to power, the day the US left? The reason is that the Afghans failed to develop the economy, society and especially politics and produce an institutionalized democracy. The Afghan „democracy“ was just on the surface, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t institutionalized. It existed only because the US kept it alive by spending resources on it. It is not sufficient to just have voting. Iran has voting too, and so do North Korea and Russia. They are not real democracies.
As for the definition of institutionalized democracy, we can use the one from the World Bank: „Democracy is conceived of three essential, interdependent elements.
- The presence of institutions and procedures through which citizens can express effective preferences about alternative policies and leaders.
- The existence of institutionalized constraints on the exercise of power by the executive.
- The guarantee of civil liberties to all citizens in their daily lives and in acts of political participation.
Other aspects of plural democracy, such as the rule of law, systems of checks and balances, freedom of the press, and so on are means to, or specific manifestations of, these general principles“.
That means a system, where many kinds of institutions (governmental or non governmental) probe and review the system to ensure the health of the democracy. They check and balance the people in power. They probe and criticize mistakes, they scrutinize budget spending, they proof the claims of the government, they check government activity and report them freely in the press. This is what a functional and institutionalized democracy looks like.
But why Democracy?
We can of course ask: who says that a democracy is the best way for ruling? Maybe someone thinks a monarchy is better or perhaps communism.
This topic has been discussed thoroughly by many experts, thinkers and researchers. Overall, we can look at centuries of human experience. It is clear that people living in democratic societies are happier, more prosperous and healthier than people in non-democratic countries. For concrete examples, you can take a look at any Western European country’s profile on the website of the Freedom House. North Korea and South Korea also provide a good example: same country, same people, same heritage, same history, same culture, same language. But the North is non-democratic and the South is democratic. South Koreans are much healthier and happier. They have a stronger economy and can travel anywhere in the world.
Iranian migrants, who leave Iran, nearly always choose to live in countries that are more democratic than Iran. There are millions of Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Pakistanis and Indians also, who work hard on developing skills and learning foreign languages to find a job in Western Countries. Why not stay in their home country? It is not only a matter of income. With their skills they could have a good income in their homelands too. What they yearn for is happiness, which often comes from freedom, and they don’t have that in their own country. Because their country is either non-democratic or the democracy is very weak.
Empirical studies on the quality of life and happiness among populations show that generally societies are happier, if they have developed all four mentioned aspects of the nation. And since these aspects are best developed under a democracy, that means directly that a democratic system is the best currently known solution to govern. This is why you see nearly every country in the world claiming to have some kind of a democracy. Even the IR regime claims to be a republic (a system in which the people (the public) has the power to make decisions).
Self-Correction in Democracy
The main reason for democracy working better than other currently known systems is that you can find mistakes and correct them. Democracy is not free of fault. There will always be corrupt politicians, there will always be liars and thieves in governments. But in an institutionalized democracy, you can identify these problems, you can talk about them freely, you can point fingers at people responsible, you can maybe even force them to resign. Or as a last solution, you can kick them out at the next election.
When this important self-regulation and self-correction is coupled with deep and well-established ideas for laws (moral philosophy and ethics), then the society can become better and better with time. And this is what you see in Western Europe. Sure, it is not perfect, but it gets better decade after decade. Some things get worse sometimes, but generally and in total, life is getting better there.
To conclude, we Iranians should today have a very clear goal in mind. What we want to achieve for ourselves and our country is an institutionalized democracy. This doesn’t decide the type or the leaning or the group of the next government. No matter what type of government, no matter what leaning, no matter what group, the core principle of the next regime in Iran should be that it is an institutionalized democracy. Of course, the details should be decided in an open and fair election, under the control of the UN. And then the majority of Iranians can decide what group or leaning they want.
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