Understanding the Reasons for Transition from Iranian Constitutional State to Authoritarian State: an Analysis in the Framework of Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory

Throughout the history, the formation of the constitutional state has been the first experience of the modern state in Iran. The change in power relations and the restriction of authoritarian power were among the most important issues of constitutional state. The current study aims at investigating the reasons for transition from Constitutional state to an authoritarian bureaucratic state by adopting Laclau and Mouffe’s framework to political discourse analysis. Research methodology is descriptive-analytical conducted by library–based data. The results showed that the constitutional revolution transformed the power structure and traditional state, but the constitutional revolution failed to create a new order. Despite legal provisions such as the formation of the parliamentary system and the constitution, the constitutional state was unable to exercise its legal power. The co-existence of traditional and reactionary components such as the Khānins, tribal leaders, tribal populations and owners in line with modern elements, intellectuals and the heterogeneity of the ruling political elites made the constitutional revolution incapable of producing profound politico-social changes. As a result, a number of internal and external factors such as financial crisis, tribal power, the imperialist treaty of 1907,disillusionment of political elites, the formation of centrifugal forces, insecurity and global chaos and development of neighboring countries, diversity of ideological in line with geopolitical points of view have been the most important factors in the transition to the authoritarian bureaucratic state of Pahlavi and the failure of the nation – building process and the collapse of politico-constitutional system in Iran.

Dispossession and the Mass Party

This chapter argues that Marx and Weber were right to relate party emergence with capitalism and the modern state. But understanding the nature of this relationship requires a 1) rethinking of the unique characteristics of the party as a political-organizational modality and 2) a focus on the destructive processes associated with the ascent of a market economy and a bureaucratic state apparatus. A reading of Marx and Weber through the prism of Antonio Gramsci’s understanding of the party-form and Bourdieu’s insights on political representation moves us in this direction. Capitalism and the modern State transform political organization, as it ceases to be an act of direct presentation to a territorial outsider and becomes an act of re-presentation whereby a specialized intermediary agent (party, union, civil societal organization) articulates private sectoral interests that cut across local communities. This transition from “territorial presentation” to “social sectoral representation” requires two primitive accumulations, and economic and a political one.

The Anti-Bureaucratic Ghost in China's Bureaucratic Machine

The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) ideology, rooted in its foundational struggles, explicitly denounces “bureaucratism” (guanliaozhuyi) as an intrinsic ailment of bureaucracy. Yet while the revolutionary Party has blasted bureaucratism, its revolutionary regime has had to find a way to coexist with bureaucracy, which is a requisite for effective governance. An anti-bureaucratic ghost thus dwells in the machinery of China's bureaucratic state. We analyse the CCP's anti-bureaucratism through two steps. First, we perform a historical analysis of the Party's anti-bureaucratic ideology, teasing out its substance and emphasizing its roots in and departures from European Marxism and Leninism. Second, we trace both the continuity and evolution in the Party's anti-bureaucratic rhetoric, taking an interactive approach that combines close reading with computational analysis of the entire corpus of the People's Daily (1947–2020). We find striking endurance as well as subtle shifts in the substance of the CCP's anti-bureaucratic ideology. We show that bureaucratism is an umbrella term that expresses the revolutionary Party's anxiety about losing its popular legitimacy. Yet the substance of the Party's concern evolved from commandism and revisionism under Mao, to corruption and formalism during reform. The Party's ongoing critiques of bureaucratism and formalism unfold in parallel fashion with its efforts to standardize, regularize and institutionalize the state.

The Testing Database as Pandemic Technology: Reflections on the COVID-19 Response in India

This article examines the COVID-19 response in India, viewing it as deeply enmeshed in the dynamics of the ‘database’ as an emerging technology of governmentality. Databases aim to translate entire populations into units of information abstracted from social identities and local specificities. In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, bureaucratic state systems attempt to manage and respond to the health crisis via databases collating testing data across the country. Problematising COVID-19 testing databases, we delve into the logic of database governance. We find that as a tool of governance the database falters in its attempts to compress complex identities and locations into de-contextualised units of information. As the complexity of lived reality interrupts the logic of databasing, state discourse on ‘unintended consequences’, ‘leakages’, ‘duplication’, and ‘reconciliation’ processes in the management of databases abounds and the ambivalence of databases becomes manifest in the COVID-19 response. In this article, we use secondary data to understand how testing databases intervene and interact with complex realities to establish bureaucratic order around a pandemic. We posit that COVID-19 testing databases should be understood as being embedded in emerging database governmentalities that supplant care of the population with the maintenance of databases.

Beyond the Hegemony of Neoliberal Ideas: Ideational Diversity and Policy Variegation in the Neoliberal State

Sociologists commonly adopt a bifurcated understanding of the neoliberal state, showing how neoliberalism’s advance coincides with the growing authority of specific actors and ideas inside the bureaucratic state as others’ authority declines. This article complicates this view by probing the dynamics of non-neoliberal action inside the state, demonstrating the ways even demoted state actors can strategically muster power resources to forward distinct policy agendas. Taking a long-term perspective on social policy developments since the early 2000s, this article reviews the case of Israel, where neoliberal policies' new hegemony and adverse outcomes triggered counter-actions inside the state, ultimately leading to policy change. Paying particular attention to the role of ideas, this article argues that by rearticulating their policy mission to align with market conventions, non-neoliberal actors were able to persuade neoliberal actors to support their policy proposals, succeeding to advance creative policy alternatives under hostile political conditions. Highlighting this strategic capacity and ideational resilience and acumen in adapting to neoliberal critique reveals how demoted state actors can manage to sustain entrenched organizational goals and institutional motivations even as they help ease the adaptation of their historical mission to the neoliberal zeitgeist.

Universal Bureaucratic State as the Sole Agent of Justice in Han Feizi’s Thought

This chapter focuses on the last fajia thinker, Han Feizi (c. 280–233 BCE), who was a grand synthesizer of many aspects of all classical Chinese moral-political discourse in his effort to perfect the operation of the impartialist state. His political project explicitly rejected the XQZP model by problematizing its every aspect. He sought an alternative model that provided the intellectual foundation for a system of impersonal and uniform bureaucratic machinery that could dispense reward and punishment automatically with as little interference from the ruler as possible. His goal of instituting a set of impartial, transparent, and uniform administrative and legal code and standard in governing the state, often in defiance of the interest of powerful aristocratic families, points to the principle of justice operative in his statist project. However, he could not solve the core tension between the monarch and the monarchy, dooming his project of building an impartial political order.

Enacting Accountability Under Populist Pressures: Theorizing the Relationship Between Anti-Elite Rhetoric and Public Accountability

While populism challenges the pluralism and technocratic expertise on which public bureaucracies are based, extant scholarship has overlooked its effects on accountability processes. In particular, it neglects the impact of anti-elite rhetoric, characterized by what can be regarded as “emotionalized blame attribution,” on the thinking and behavior of accountability actors. Responding to this gap, this article examines the impact of this distinctive form of populist rhetoric on accountability relationships within the bureaucratic state. It identifies three “stages” whereby these populist pressures challenge accountability relationships, threaten the reputation of accountability actors, and result in alternative accountability practices. In doing so, the article provides a roadmap for assessing the impact of anti-elite rhetoric on accountability actions.

From the tax-sharing system to the program system: Institutional evolution and organizational mechanism

Soon after implementing reforms to the tax-sharing system, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) implemented public budgeting reform, and thus formed a new kind of state governance system, the program system (PS). There are three categories of program expenditures available to local governments: “earmarked grants” from higher-level authorities; “non-grant program funds” from higher-level authorities; and program funds from same-level government departments. The convergence and reorganization of these three categories of program expenditure at the local level has, to a great extent, molded the fiscal structure of grassroots government in the PRC. The PS in essence does not mean discarding or surpassing the bureaucratic state system, rather, it is the active improvement and supplementing of the bureaucratic system by the state: a continuation and development of state regime construction. The overt purpose of the PS is to “solidify” budgetary constraints, while the underlying purpose is to enhance the government’s ability to respond to society. The two purposes present some tension in practice, as the rationalized and professionalized forms of governance that result do not necessarily enhance the ability to respond to public needs; in fact the reverse is quite possible.

Supporting Searchers’ Desire for Emplacement in Berlin: Informal Practices in Defiance of an (Im)mobility Regime

The article traces the ways in which refugees in precarious legal and economic circumstances in Lagers (refugee camps) in Germany participate in informal practices to reverse their displaced positions. More specifically, the paper demonstrates how refugees work in conjunction with a Berlin-based solidarity group in order to find access to informally organized housing outside of the formal bureaucratic state system. The study shows that refugees’ engagement with informal structures must be understood as struggles towards emplacement and formality. Much scholarship has discussed the economic aspects of informality in the global South and post-socialist countries. However, there is little discussion on how refugees may engage in informal practices within the nation-state in order to find emplacement and achieve formality. The article additionally demonstrates how informal acts are co-produced between citizens and refugees in the process of searching and offering of living places outside state defined formal systems. Thus, informality needs to be understood as resistance against displacement, struggles towards emplacement and formality. The study draws on ethnographic data and on-going participation in a Berlin-based grassroots group, Schlafplatzorga, which supports refugees on an informal level with temporary accommodation.