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Below you will find short introductions of the different chapters of my thesis, as well as the introduction, conclusion and bibliography. At the end of every section, the chapters can be downloaded as pdf files. 

The whole thesis can also be downloaded as one large PDF file. Follow this Link.

© Erik van Zuylen, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Erik van Zuylen with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Please cite like this: Van Zuylen (2009): ‘Scenario’s of Political Regime Change in Iran’. Masters Thesis, University of Amsterdam. URL:http://iranscenarios.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/ma-thesis-erik-van-zuylen-scenarios-of-political-regime-change-in-iran.pdf

Preface & Acknowledgements

 

Although this thesis took almost two years to write, it is the result of an accumulation of research interests I attained throughout my time as a Political Science student. My interest in Political Sociology resulted from reading ‘Capitalist Development & Democracy’ from Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens (1992), one of the most interesting books during my Bachelor period at the Free University in Amsterdam. When I decided to write my Bachelor Thesis about democratisation in Eastern Europe, I discovered part of the Comparative Politics field still suffers from the rigidities of the Poperian, (post-)positivist research school. This was especially frustrating while we had extensively learnt about the ongoing meta-theoretical contestation in the social sciences, in an excellent course by André Krouwel and Bastiaan van Apeldoorn. The resulting conflict with my thesis supervisor led to my first year of study delay, but also gave me the time to think through and write a more sophisticated thesis, in which I developed a perspective on democratisation research based on a critical realist ontology and scenario methodology.

When the time had come to write my Masters Thesis at the University of Amsterdam, I decided to ‘test’ the perspective I developed in my Bachelors Thesis on the concrete case of Iran. This task has not been easy, because it meant both an extensive theoretical excercise and an obligation to follow the news in Iran and beyond intensively. I hope the result will be interesting, for scholars and informed citizens alike.

 I am very thankful to my first supervisor, Gerd Junne, for providing me with the critical bibliographical sources that form the basis of the thesis and for being patient enough to let the writing process take its course. I also want to thank my second supervisor, Jeanette Mak, for reading and grading it on such a short notice. My special thanks go to Jurgen Hoitsma, who has functioned like some kind of third supervisor. Our many discussions helped me to keep sharpening my perspective and he provided me with great sources and too many tips for books to read. I am also indepted to Mient Jan Faber. His many stories, during the ‘History of the Peace Movement’ course and later, have enriched my perspective on politics and conflict. Last, but not least, I want to thank my parents, brother, sister and friends, for believing in me and bearing with me somewhat longer than expected.

 

Erik van Zuylen

May 2009

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Introduction

 

Just a year before the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Shah claimed: ‘nobody can overthrow me. I have the support of 700.000 troops, all the workers, and most of the people. I have the power’. In that same year, the American president Jimmy Carter proclaimed Iran was an ‘island of stability’ (Amineh 1998, p. 460- 464). This illustrates the unpredictability of political regime change: in only one year, the unimaginable had happened. The army had disintegrated and a revolutionary regime was in place. Unpredictability is one of the central features of regime change and of political macro processes in general. This is the case because the social world is an open system, deals with a large number of interrelated mechanisms and human agency. Still, social scientists have the difficult task to say something useful about these processes (see Bernstein 2000). Scenario building is one of the most promising methods for thinking about change, which has become increasingly popular in recent years[1]. Still, this method runs the risk of being dismissed as ‘unscientific’, due to the speculation that is inherent in it (Nekkers 2006, p. 89).

 

The study of ‘political regime change’ is one of the main fields of study in political sociology, although it has usually been framed as ‘democratization studies’[2]. Both ‘regime change‘ and ‘democratization’ have become extremely contested concepts in recent years. The term democratization inherently assumes that political regimes will in due time move into a democratic direction. This can be seen as ‘Eurocentric’, as it perceives liberal democracy as a superior form of government, to which the ‘Third World’ needs to catch up. ‘Regime change’ has an even more bitter ring to it, as it has been one of the central concepts of the doctrine of the ‘neo-conservative’ movement, in which it plotted to overthrow different regimes around the world, including Iraq (Mackay 2002). On the other hand, there are still tens of thousands of activists around the world that fight for ‘political regime change’ in their countries, be it for an ‘Islamic’, ‘Democratic’, or ‘Socialist’ order. This is not surprising: the political regime is one of the social phenomena that is the most relevant for people around the world in their day-to-day life. Therefore, the social scientist should keep researching this subject with great urgency, while acknowledging the controversy surrounding it.

 

Scenario building as a discipline has primarily been used as a pragmatic tool for companies to develop a long term strategy and be able to cope with contingencies (Schwartz 1996, Nekkers 2006). Bernstein et al. (2000) have situated the method in the International Relations discipline. This thesis will explore the usefulness of scenario building for researching ‘political regime change’, trying to formulate a more substantial theoretical framework. First, there will be a short discussion of the ongoing meta-theoretical debate in the social sciences. It will be argued that critical realism is the most promising meta-theoretical framework. After this, scenario building will be introduced, focusing on the way the different building blocks can be linked to existing theories of regime change. In the following section, the theoretical framework will be applied to the case of Iran. This country has had a long history of political regime change in the last hundred years. Currently, its power struggle with the United States gives it center stage in media throughout the world. Scenarios of political regime change in Iran should give a good idea of the unpredictability of Iranian politics for the years to come. The above leads to the following research question, which will be central in this master thesis: How can scenario building as a research discipline help to understand political regime change in Iran?

The times for scenario building have never been better. The economic crisis that emerged last year has uncovered the great uncertainty underlying the current social, political and economic order(s) around the world. This uncertainty had already started to surface after the ‘September 11’ attacks. When starting this project around two years ago, the author concluded that we might be in the middle of a ‘critical juncture’ in world history, a historical episode in which radical changes take place, the effects of which can be felt long afterwards. In this sense it is no coincidence that the current president of the United States has got ‘change’ as one of the central themes of his presidency. Hopefully, the Social Sciences can help both academics and citizens in general to gain more understanding about the world they are living in and how it might change in the foreseeable future.   

 

This thesis starts from the authors strong urge to look at political issues comprehensively, a bit in line with the notion of ‘integral history’, formulated by Romein (1971, p. 536): ‘with this I mean the histiography that takes the thought seriously that psychology, philosophy, sociology, the arts – and I could go on for a long time -: that the science of politics, economics, religion… all sciences and literatures, of the relationships, not in the last place, between groups, sexes and generations…should in one way or the other be included in historical research’ (translated by author). Still, this idea is very unpopular in light of the current state of the social sciences, based on strong and fundamental differences between disciplines (see for example Smith 1998). An integral approach highlights the notion that ‘everything is connected to everything’, while looking for ways to understand this connection in light of a particular research problematic (Romein 1971, p. 545). Scenario thinkers instinctively take such an integral approach, looking for demographic, economic, socio-cultural, technological, scientific, ecologic and political developments as factors within a system of interacting processes (Nekkers, p. 60). Still, after acknowledging complexity and unpredictability, they construct internally consistent narratives in order to structure thinking about the future.

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[1] (See for example Aarts & van Rijsingen,  Aarts & van Duijne 2008, Perthes 2007 )

[2] See for example Landman (2003, p. 147-176) or Geddes (1999) for a bibliographical overview

1. Theoretical Framework

 

Before explicitly dealing with regime change in the next chapter, this section will deal with theoretical issues that should be discussed separately from the subject matter and the case under research. After the emergence of post-modernism, a lot of time and energy of social researchers is currently devoted to discussing meta-theory, the implicit and explicit theoretical assumptions that underlie research. Meta-theoretical debates center around two issues: ontology, assumptions on how the world works, and epistemology, what constitutes good knowledge. Too much attention to these issues entails the risk of making the social sciences a jeu d’espirit, a mindgame like chess (Bernstein 2000, p. 44). It would therefore be quite legitimate to keep meta-theoretical assumptions implicit and devote more precious space to substantive matters. Still, as Schön & Rein (1994) show, a lot of seemingly intractable disagreements can be solved by reflecting more on our ‘metacultural frames’ and acknowledging that the social sciences are a ‘situated practice’, influenced by the researchers personal background and socially constructed premises (Smith 1998, p. 1). The first section of this chapter will therefore be devoted to outlining an explicit meta-theoretical framework, while keeping it as parsimonious as possible, not taking up the impossible task of discussing all possibly relevant work on the subject. The second section will shortly discuss scenario building as a research discipline and the methodological choices that have been made.

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2. Scenarios and political regime change

 

One of the advantages of scenario building for companies, is that it forces employees to reflect on the factors that really determine their organizations’ future. While most workers might initially think of aspects that are related to their day-to day work, the transactional/work environment (figure 2), or the internal work processes of their companies, they will realize in time that the most influential factors lie outside the direct control of themselves and their company, the contextual environment in figure 2. The economic crisis that is currently raging will have made this understanding insistently clear to almost anyone.

For the modern nation-state, the situation is markedly similar, although the idea of national self determination is an important notion. The state, in its effort to accomplish the collective identity of the nation (see above), is to a large extend dependent on a range of factors beyond its control . This is especially the case in a globalised world, as can again be illustrated by looking at the current economic crisis. Still, there are important differences between states and companies and also between different states. This chapter will propose a conceptual framework that can be used to analyze states and their contextual environment, as a preparation for writing scenarios. Some of the concepts that are used here will be further defined in chapter 4, when they are applied to the concrete case of Iran.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Environmental layers of a Business/Organization (Nekkers 2006, p. 60)

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3. Retroductive phase: An exploration of Iranian history and geography

In order to gain a better understanding of the causal complex surrounding the Iranian political regime, this chapter will explore different episodes of Iranian history. This exploration will be preceded by a short geographical introduction, just to give the reader an idea what country is being discussed. The historical part will follow the principle of ‘contemporary history’, stating those facts that are deemed important for understanding present and future.

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4. Converging phase: making sense of a complex reality

Chapter 3 is an exploration of Iranian history, an attempt to understand some of the complexities surrounding Iranian politics. Before translating this empirical exploration into scenarios for the future, it will be necessary to make a more explicit connection to the concepts outlined in chapter 2, make some generalizations with regard to the structures and agencies that might be expected to drive Iranian politics in the future, and the critical uncertainties surrounding these structures[1] (Neelen 2006, p. 125).  It will therefore also be needed to analyse some wider trends on the global and regional level that are expected to influence Iran in the foreseeable future. The global economic crisis that currently  rages, serves as a reminder of the uncertainty of a lot of factors that many would have deemed relatively stable only a year ago. Firstly, there will be a short discussion of the current political regime in Iran, compared to the democratic ideal type outlined in chapter two. This will be followed by an analysis of the five other structural dimensions: demography, economy, socio-cultural, technology and science, and ecology. The next section will elaborate on the international dimension, both with regard to global and regional issues. After that, there will be a discussion of the different political forces in Iran, their exercise of power and the role of agency in these forces. The chapter will end with the outlining of the driving forces underlying the scenario’s in the next chapter.

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[1] Some information and analyses in this chapter will inevitably overlap with chapter 3. Still, it clearly adds to the quality of the thesis to combine a historical exploration with a conceptual analysis. The historical exploration has the advantage of understanding the chronology and the interplay of different factors in concrete episodes.  The conceptual analyses highlights those factors that have had recurrently influenced Iranian politics and the way in which they might influence future events. For another example of such an approach, see Halliday (2005).

5. Scenarios

This chapter translates the historical and conceptual analyses above into narratives of possible futures. To make the text as readable as possible, the amount of references has been kept to a minimum. The stories should not be judged on their probability[1], but on the way they uncover the different potentialities that might have a decisive influence on the Iranian regime in the future. The time frame in which these stories will unfold is somewhat flexible, but approximately five years. Like outlined in the introduction, there are strong indications that the coming years will constitute a ‘critical juncture’ in history. This is one of the rare occasions in which radically different scenarios can be crafted that have a relatively short running term, without losing their plausibility.

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[1] Although they should be internally plausible

Concluding Reflections

After discussing a wide range of issues in the preceding chapters, the conclusion will return to the research question posed in the introduction: How can scenario building as a research tool help to understand political regime change in Iran? This question will be approached from three different angles:

• A reflection on the scenarios in chapter 5, making use of the conceptual framework in chapter 2.
• A reflection on the role of the different chapters in the thesis and the methodological choices that have been made.
• A reflection on the lessons that can be drawn for future research.                             

 

Scenarios and potentialities

 

The scenarios in the last chapter describe four radically different geopolitical situations that are linked to radically different political developments inside Iran. As mentioned above, these stories should not be judged on their probability, but on the way they uncover the different potentialities that might have a decisive influence on the Iranian regime in the future. 

 

In the ‘Globalisation 2.0’ scenario, the survival of international economic structures, the diminished economic role of fossile fuels and the peace accord between Israel and Palestine have a weakening effect on the Iranian regime in the middle-long term. The diminishing symbolic and economic power of the regime leads to a continuous shrinking of popular legitimacy. The only means to stay in power are the strong structures of ‘command’ and the ability to apply physical violence. When the death of supreme leader Khamene’i disturbs the command structure of the regime, a fundamental change can not be stopped. When the symbolic power and personal charisma of leaders like Mohammad Khatami turn out to be strong enough, a democratic structure might emerge, in which different forces agree to settle their fundamental differences by compromise and the power of the popular vote. The potentiality of this scenario has been apparent from the emergence of the reformist movement in 1997 onwards. The strong popular current that wants more political and social freedom has been effectively resisted so far by the different conservative factions, but remains an important driving force for the future.    

 

In the ‘New Medievalist’ scenario, the overarching structures of the globalised economy and the international state system are severely weakened, due to a destructive war that disrupts the global energy supply. This leads to a breakdown of the accumulative and administrative capacity of the Iranian state. The result is a ‘Hobbesian’ situation in which different collectives struggle for wealth and power and authority is much more decentralized (Dekker & Faber 2008). Such a situation can already be observed in ‘failed states’ like Somalia and Iraq. The potentiality of this scenario can be derived from the ‘centrifugal’ tensions in Iran in the past years and the disunity within the current regime. Numerous comparable episodes have taken place in the past, when the state was weakened by war, economic crisis or political strive.

 

In the ‘New Mercantilist’ scenario, a greater economic role for states is combined with increasing geopolitical tensions. The natural resources in the Middle East are the focal point of these tensions. Nuclear proliferation leads to a new system of ‘Mutual Assured Destruction’, in which Iran plays a prominent role. The ‘neo-conservative’ faction in Iran is able to strengthen its grip on power in this situation, supported by the high energy prices and the continuous foreign threat. The potentiality of this scenario has surfaced in recent years. The credit crisis and the decline of the American hegemony might lead to the destabilization of the global economic system and the system of global governance. The transfer of wealth and power to the East puts pressure on the relatively peaceful cooperation of the last decades between political entities like China, Russia, the United States and the European Union. Within Iran, the Ahmadinejad administration has so far failed to create a stable economic situation, but has successfully strengthened the capacity for repression by agencies like the Revolutionary Guards and the Basiji’s, even against new means of communication. It has also successfully used the increasing symbolic status of its Islamic narrative to strengthen its regional influence. This increasing symbolic status is partly caused by the continuing hopelessness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the decreasing popularity of the authoritarian regimes in the region.

 

In the ‘Rise of East Asia’ scenario, the ‘Greater West Asian Crisis’ stabilizes and the extensive state intervention initially succeeds to reignite the global economy. This success is threatened to be nullified by a combined surge in inflation and explosion of energy prices, in which the United States is the focal point again. Such a scenario is prevented by a fundamental restructuring of the world economy, led by China and India, the emerging East-Asian powers. The new hegemony is especially based on the ‘new mass production’ of ‘green’ cheap products, aimed at the ever growing urban populations around the world. For Iran, the ‘Chinese model’ is very attractive, because it enables the elite to stay in power while diminishing both domestic and foreign threats to the regime. The potentiality of this scenario becomes apparent when looking at the explosive economic growth of some ‘developing countries’ combined with the relative contraction of the United States and Europe. Many analysts have signaled that this development means a victory for capitalism, but not for the liberal democratic model[1].                                             

 

Scenarios and agency

 

The uncovering of concrete potentialities from a wide range of possible driving forces is one way in which scenario building can help understanding political regime change in Iran. When looking at agency, the picture becomes more complicated. Due to the focus on macro processes that have the most profound impact on a certain context, scenario building does not automatically focus on the role of agency. The agents that play a role in the scenarios are mainly those that stand on top of the structure of command of different states. This is no coincidence, states are still the collectives with the most profound ‘productive and destructive capabilities’ (see chapter 1, p12, chapter 2, p. ).

 

Among the most critical agents is supreme leader Ali Khamene’i. He can decide to throw all his weight behind the neo-conservative faction and their allies within the repressive organs of the state, allowing them to use all means possible to repress other political powers. When international tensions remain high, Iran is able to prevent foreign attacks and the production of oil and gas remains an effective means of capital accumulation, this might lead to a ‘totalitarian’ state structure, in which one collective manages to control the totality of the Iranian state and society. On the other hand, such a structure estranges large parts of the population, due to the extensive use of force. Therefore, it is vulnerable to total collapse, when capital accumulation is hampered, the symbolic power of foreign threats diminishes and the structure of command disintegrates.  

 

Such a scenario could be stimulated by other critical agencies. President Obama, other political and economic leaders and citizens around the world might be able to engage in a ‘green revolution’ that would radically diminish the economic role of fossile fuels. Although few people expect this after the installation of the new cabinet, the Israeli leadership might make the tough choice to make peace with the Palestinians and the Palestinian leaders might accept an Israeli peace offer. This would be a blow for the symbolic power of the neo-conservative leadership that uses the enmity against Israel to rally support and silence opponents. A state that is dominated by the neo-conservative factions would be further weakened when the supreme leader would be unable to continue functioning, for example due to death or severe disease. He functions as an important stabilizer in the command structure of the faction that prevents infighting from getting out of hand.

 

When such a combination of relatively autonomous actions of different agencies takes place, the weakening of the Iranian state structure could be an opening for radical change. In such an episode, the ‘agency of the subaltern[2]’ (Attabaki 2002, p. 6) becomes critical. The urban and rural poor, or ‘the oppressed’, have played an important symbolic (and real) role in the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, as the subaltern that had to be freed from the oppressive state and courageously defended the revolution in the war. Parts of this social class still have a clientelist relationship with the state and were important in the election of Ahmadinejad as president. Next to this ‘traditional subaltern’ the ‘new subaltern’ consists of a wide range of groups, like women, professionals, ethnic and/or religious minorities, intellectuals and students, that are denied social, economic and political power by the state (Attabaki 2002, p. 13-17). This wide range of groups formed the electoral basis of the presidential victories of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and 2001. Whether these groups succeed in permanently transforming the political regime, depends on a number of factors. For example: whether they manage to mobilize to enforce their demands, whether they manage to cooperate effectively, whether they manage to resist (violent) attacks by their opponents, and whether they have the courage to occupy leadership positions within the new state apparatus. Effective leadership is critical in this respect. Which particular persons will potentially form this leadership is hard to predict. Only Khatami is explicitly named in the ‘Globalization 2.0’ scenario. Other well-known representatives of ‘subaltern’ social strata are Shirin Ebadi, Akhbar Ganji and Abdollah Nouri. Still, it can be expected that persons that are currently less well known will play critical roles in potentially changing the current regime, especially among students and the labor movement.       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

A big regional war in the Middle East is an episode that many analysts have predicted. The author found the scenario where the Israeli leadership decides to make the first attack on Iran, after which the United States would be unable to resist getting dragged into the fight, as the most plausible possibility. The rest of the ‘New Medievalist’ scenario is a good example of the unintended consequences that might follow an agents’ critical decision. A destructive war in the Middle East might, at least temporarily, be the deathblow to the capitalist world economy that is already struggling at the moment. This might be another situation in which the Iranian state apparatuses are severely weakened, enabling agents that currently play a marginal role to become much more powerful.

 

The last prominent actor that should be discussed is the leadership of the Chinese state.[3] The geopolitical consequences of the rapid rise of the Chinese economy arguably is one of the critical uncertainties of the near future. The current structures of global governance are crafted in a situation in which the Unites States were in a dominant geopolitical position. A position that has arguably been eroding in the last decades. It can be predicted that the Chinese and other emerging states might want to transform these structures, to affirm their new strength. The scenarios feature three distinct paths which the Chinese leadership might decide to take, partly guided by the particular circumstances. In the first path, it decides to favor the status quo, as the United States under president Obama is successfully reasserting its global leadership role. China is still profiting from the global stability to expand its economy and does not have to bear the risks of a more prominent role on the world stage. The alliance with Iran is less important due to the emergence of new energy sources. In the second path, the Chinese leadership feels it needs to be more assertive to protect its interests. The global monetary structure is unfavorable for economic growth and an Israeli attack on Iran threatens to hamper the supply of energy sources, which could be an existential threat to the Chinese state. This situation leads to a very competitive geopolitical situation, in which different nuclear powers are pitted against each other. Hopefully, the logic of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ is again applicable then. In the third path, the transfer of power between the United States and China proceeds in a more gradual and peaceful way. The competence of technocrats in the different countries prevents an economic collapse, when the United States faces an inflation crisis. This situation favors those forces in Iran that advocate the ‘Chinese approach’: an opening up of the country, a rationalization of the state and a more peaceful state-society relationship, without risking the general volatility and insecurity of a full fledged liberal democratic regime.          

 

Feedback on earlier chapters

 

In a way, the scenarios are just the ‘connection of the dots’ of the earlier chapters. The first chapter discusses the way in which the social scientists’ ontological and epistemological positions are contested, why this discussion is important and which position is underlying this thesis. Meta-theoretical assumptions can be highly influential for the concrete outcome of research. Therefore, these assumptions should be explicated, in order to be discussed. A ‘critical realist’ position is viable for a number of reasons:

• It identifies the fundamental unpredictability of the social world that is an open system, deals with a large number of interrelated mechanisms and human agency.
• Still, critical realists recognize that the social reality is not totally volatile and can even be very constant in times, due to the way it is structured.
• These structures are always temporal though and constantly reproduced and transformed by human agency.
• This means a certain social context is a causal complex both influenced by historically sedimented structures, human agency and chance (Sibeon 1999).  
• When recognizing this, good social science should be flexible, reflexive, communicative and interdisciplinary.

 

The second chapter tries to connect these assumptions to a particular research problem: political regime change. It establishes power as a ‘container concept’ that can be used to understand the way in which different agents reproduce and transform a political regime. When defining power very broadly as the ‘production of causal consequences’, it (partly) loses its normative connotation, because it becomes an unavoidable part of social and political life. Different structural dimensions constitute the power of agents, following the scenario literature, the chapter defines the political-institutional context, demography, economy, the socio-cultural context, technology and science, and ecology as such broad structural dimensions. A limited group of agents can concentrate the power derived from these structures to dominate the state. This domination is always contested by other collectives. A regime is a system of formal and informal rules aimed at regulating this domination and contestation. Democracy is used as an ‘ideal type’ of a regime that is aimed at regulating power struggles between different collectives and limiting the exercise of state power.   

 

When feeding this back to the scenarios, we see how many phenomena that have structured the social world in the last decades are under severe pressure, like the global economy, the monetary system and the system of global governance. Agents like president Obama try to stabilize these structures, while others are trying to further undermine them or transform them. Inside Iran, the situation appears to be equally volatile. The state has been dominated by a ‘nomenclatura’ that initially used the ‘symbolic power’ of the Islamic narrative to overthrow the old regime and establish a new regime. Over time, this symbolic power has constantly diminished, making the nomenclatura more dependent on the repressive organs of the state. This resulted in an increasingly polarized situation in which different collectives with radically different agendas and political practices struggle to dominate the state. The outcome of this double volatility is the basis of the radically different scenarios.

 

The third chapter is a relatively broad and extensive exploration of Iranian history and geography. Such an analysis is necessary in order to identify the historically grown structures and the historically constituted agencies that define the current causal complex surrounding the Iranian regime. Some might argue to keep this chapter much shorter and confine it to a short description of, and reference to, other research into the subject. This would have the disadvantage of keeping a lot of knowledge on which the scenarios are based implicit, limiting the ability of the reader to understand, contest and complement the author’s interpretation of history. After recognizing the way in which historical research is fundamentally contested, the choice has therefore been made to explicate and elaborate, to make the communicative process possible that is central in critical realist research.

 

The fourth chapter functions as a bridge between the second and third chapter, trading the chronological approach of chapter three for a conceptual analysis. When comparing this chapter with the scenarios, the picture is mixed. On the one hand, the scenarios include a wide range of the structures and agencies discussed in chapter four, in different narratives of causal possibilities. On the other hand, it is possible to observe a certain bias, that is caused by the limits of time, resources and competencies at the researcher’s disposal. An example of such a bias is the limited influence of ecological factors within the scenarios. The author did not have enough expertise to plausibly include these factors in the scenarios. Furthermore, factors that might be highly influential, like the situation within Iraq, Pakistan and Sudan and the geopolitical contest over influence within South America, have not sufficiently been included in the scenarios. Still, whether the inclusion of these factors would have fundamentally changed the scenario’s is doubtful. The inclusion of these factors would also have further complicated the narrative, endangering its internal consistency.

Another example is the difference in detail between the influence of different agencies. Ideally speaking, scenarios include the concrete bodily actors that stand on top of certain social hierarchies and collectives and are more or less able to make autonomous choices with far-reaching consequences. To be able to do this, the researcher should have extensive knowledge of the causal complex of such hierarchies. This knowledge is both limited by the specialization of the researcher, the amount of time and resources to digest information about the specific context and the quality of the available information. Within the limits of this project, it was for instance not possible to specify which actors take critical decisions within the leadership of the Chinese state.

 

Future research

 

Such limits of time, resources and competencies[4] are inherent in every research project. A recognition of these limits within this thesis forms the basis of a reflection on the possibilities for future research. Firstly, it should be noted that this research is completely based on secondary research, i.e. the analysis of existing research and journalistic sources. With more time and resources, these sources could be complemented by primary empirical data, derived from interviews, statistical analyses, field research, network analyses and other research methods. It should be noted that the conducting of primary research is not a priority within the discipline of scenario building. The quality of scenarios is especially determined by the researchers’ ability to analyze the interaction between a broad range of macro and micro factors within a certain causal complex. In this sense it functions as a ‘node’ between different fields of research. Still, there are different examples of ways in which primary research can improve the quality of a scenario project:

• Field research, enabling the researcher to have a better understanding of the specific cultural codes and collective emotions within a specific context.
• Opinion polls of certain constituencies that can uncover their hidden emotions and loyalties.
• Interviews of decision makers, to identify their own understanding of choices they might have to make in the future.
• Network analyses, to get a more detailed and accurate view of certain social hierarchies and the distribution of power within them.

1. ·         Statistical analyses of voting data, or economic data.   

 

Another limit of this thesis is that it is conducted by only one researcher. Next to the resulting limits on competency and knowledge, this makes the research vulnerable to criticism from a post-modern point of view. Because the researcher is based within certain power structures (like the Dutch state, or the University of Amsterdam) and grounded by a certain (‘Western’ or ‘Dutch’) culture, the research is necessarily biased and connected to a political agenda. Such criticism could partly be avoided in future research, by making it a collaborative effort between researchers from different cultural and/or disciplinary backgrounds. This would make the research more balanced and enable it to include more causal factors, improving the interdisciplinarity, reflexiveness and communicative quality. Still, it should be noted that research conducted by a group is generally influenced by internal power relationships. Furthermore, one of the functions of social scientific research can be to gain more self-understanding. Baert speaks of a ‘hermeneutic circle…a recursive process by which our assumptions are both preconditions of and affected by the encounter’ (Baert 2005, p. 155-157). When explicating his analyses of a specific context and his view of different future causal possibilities, the researcher can understand his own cultural biases and the limits of his own imagination. Therefore, the individual writing of scenarios can also be an advantage. Another interesting setup would be a comparison between scenarios written by researchers from different backgrounds, to compare and try to understand their presuppositions. In this way it can be a tool for ‘frame reflection’, a method which can be used to resolve fundamental political conflicts (Schön & Rein 1994).    

 

A reflection on the scenarios in this thesis uncovers several cultural biases and lacks of imagination of the author. Like many ‘Western’ analysts, the author is skeptical and in a way even fearful of radically different social, political and economic orders. This is clearly articulated by the ‘globalization 2.0’ scenario, which could be seen as the author’s view of an improved version of the current global order. On the other hand, the ‘new medievalist’ and ‘new mercantilist’ scenarios both have a negative connotation. Furthermore, the author tends to favor a political regime that is close to the democratic ideal type. This is a clear lack of imagination that can only be resolved by more reflection on political theory and political philosophy, and by more communication with researchers from different backgrounds.

 

A complete scenario project involves the ‘tracking’ of the ‘real’ empirical outcomes. In this way, scenarios can be continuously tested and updated when new realities necessitate this. This is only possible within a research project that lasts several years. An example of an empirical reality that would necessitate adaptation of the scenarios in this thesis is the recent withdrawal of Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf from the Iranian presidential race (Press TV 2009). Tracking the scenarios in this thesis could involve:

• A daily review of news sites like www.rooz.com
• Monthly interviews of selected specialists and researchers
• Bi-monthly opinion polls of a focus group
• Half yearly field researches
• Reviews of recently published books and articles.

Another way to improve the current thesis would make more use of graphic illustrations. A concrete example would be an adaptation of figure 2 that is a depiction of the causal complex of a company, to the theoretical framework in this thesis. Another example would be an artistic impression of the different scenarios.   

 

Finally, an important question is to what extend the theoretical framework and methodology used in this thesis could be used to analyze other contexts. This appears to be possible, as the framework is both abstract and flexible. Still, not all countries are equally interesting to research with this methodology. Firstly, when a country is too dependent on international developments, the scenarios might not add too much to the existing analyses. Secondly, the existence of fundamental political unpredictability and complexity makes the scenario method more viable, as this prevents the use of other methods, like projections or prognoses (Nekkers 2006, p.66). Thirdly, the quality of information sources greatly influences the quality of the scenarios. Too little information prevents the method from being effective. Examples of countries that would be interesting to research with this framework and methodology are the United States, Iraq, China, Russia, Brazil, Pakistan, South-Africa or Egypt.

 

Conclusion

 

It can be concluded that scenario building is a very promising research tool for understanding political regime change, when grounded in the right theoretical framework. It forces the researcher to translate his understanding of the causal complex surrounding a certain political regime into different narratives of possible future developments. In this way, he concretizes his view of causal potentialities, critical agencies and uncertainties. Especially when analyzing a complex country like Iran, that is very uncertain and volatile, making scenarios can help structuring one’s thinking. In today’s world, that appears to be living through a ‘critical juncture’, structured, fundamental, holistic and imaginative thinking is critical for policy makers, scholars and concerned citizens alike.

 

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[1] See for example Tegenlicht (2009)

[2] The ‘subaltern’ can be defined as the subordinate agent in a power relationship (Scott 2001, p. 2)

[3] The author does not have enough knowledge of the Chinese state structure to be more specific about the Chinese leadership.

[4] It should be noted that these factors are to some extend interchangeable. Time and resources can be used to acquire competencies, both by learning new skills or hiring the expertise of other researchers. Time and competencies can be used to acquire more resources for a certain research project. The amount of available resources partly determines the amount of time that can be invested. 

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