Not just a piece of paper: Iranian constitution as a key arena of political contention in authoritarian context

What roles do constitutions play in authoritarian regimes? It has been long argued that constitutions have no meaningful function in closed authoritarian settings and serve only as window dressing. However, more recent research suggests that just as elections and parliaments, also constitutions might not be a mere pretence but foster the durability of authoritarian regimes, such as by facilitating the coordination between different regime centres. This paper seeks to contribute to the debate about authoritarian constitutions by going one step further and moving beyond the functionalist approach to authoritarian institutions. It argues that constitutions in non-democracies can be lively documents that are at the very heart of conflicts between diverse interests within the regime. This argument is supported by an analysis of the under-researched case of the Iranian constitution adopted in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The paper examines more than 480 legal documents published during the tenure of two Iranian presidents, Muhammad Khatami (1997 – 2005) and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005 – 2013). More specifically, it focuses on the documents produced by two main judicial bodies with the authority to interpret the Iranian constitution: the Guardian Council and the Expediency Council. We find that although the two presidents whose mandates we investigate represented dissimilar approaches to the core regime elites, Khatami being known as a reformist while neoconservative Ahmadinejad was more aligned with the Supreme Leader, their time in office exhibited a striking similarity concerning the political usage of the constitution. Both presidents regularly invoked constitutional provisions to pursue their political goals and their efforts were as regularly met with resistance from the Guardian and Expediency councils, which kept guarding the interests of the traditional power structures and the Supreme Leader in particular. Extensive empirical evidence from two different periods in Iranian recent history thus shows not only that constitutions in authoritarianism are far from sham but also that their significance reaches beyond simple coordination vehicles. We argue that just like in democracies, constitutions in non-democratic settings can be the very battlefields where different political interests compete.