THE PARADOX OF PARTICIPATION: INSTITUTIONS, SOCIAL STATUS, AND THE PROVINCIAL DIVIDE IN IRAN'S ELECTORAL POLITICS A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Alireza Raisi December 2016 Dissertation written by Alireza Raisi M.A., Kent State University, USA, 2013 B.S., Sharif University of Technology, Iran, 2000 Approved by _____Andrew Barnes________________________ , Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee _____Landon Hancock______________________ , Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee _____Daniel Hawes______________________________ _____Mary Ann Heiss____________________________ _____David Kaplan______________ _______________ Accepted by _____Andrew Barnes__________________________ , Chair, Department of Political Science ______James Blank_____________________________ , Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………iv LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………………...v ACKNOWLEDGMENT……………………………………………………………………...vi CHAPTER1 ........................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER2 ......................................................................................................................................... 19 The Rise of Clientelism in Parliamentary Politics of Iran .................................................................. 19 CHAPTER3 ......................................................................................................................................... 70 The Resurgence of Populism in Iran’s Presidential Elections ............................................................ 70 CHAPTER 4 ...................................................................................................................................... 122 Preferences, Attentiveness, and Democratic Reform in Iran’s Electoral Politics ............................ 122 CHAPTER 5 .................................................................................................................................. 162 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 162 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………………..178 APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………………………………186 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Diagram of Formal Authority in Iran………………………………………………….32 Figure 2. Turnout in Center and Periphery………………………………………………………………..64 Figure 3. A poster of Ahmadinejad’s at a campaign rally……………………………………….81 Figure 4. One of Ahmadinejad’s billboards……………………………………………………...82 Figure 5. Expected value of Ahmadinejad vote in the first round resulted from change in the ideology and distributive variable from its Minimum to Maximum ……………………………….93 Figure 6. Expected value of Ahmadinejad vote in the second round resulted from change in the anti-ruling elite from its Minimum to Maximum …………………………………………………….93 Figure 7. Ideology and conservative vote in Persian vs. Non-Persian Provinces…………………..94 Figure 8. Conservative Persian Belt Map………………………………………………………………94 Figure 9. The map of front-runners, the first round of 2005 election………………………………..94 Figure 10: University Students in Iran, Data obtained from Statistical Center of Iran…………………..128 Figure 11: Vetting Rate in Iran’s Parliamentary Politics, Data Obtained from Iran’s Ministry of Interior ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………131 Figure 12: Occupational Background of MPs, Data Obtained from Majles Bureau of Public Relations………………………………………………………………………………………………….142 Figure 13: Winners’ Average Vote in Tehran’s Parliamentary Politics…………………………………147 Figure 14: Parliamentary Turnout in Tehran District……………………………………………………149 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1. The result of the first round the 2005 presidential election………………………………...80 Table 2. The result of the second round the 2005 presidential election……………………………..80 Table 3. The result of Seemingly Unrelated Regression for the first round of the 2005 presidential election……………………………………………………………………………...87 Table 4. the result of Ordinary Least Square Regression for the Second round of the 2005 presidential election……………………………………………………………………………...87 Table 5. the result of Ordinary Least Square Regression for the non-participants………………89 Table 6. The correlation between Ahmadinejad and the conservative candidates’ vote………...93 Table 7. Result of the 2013 presidential election………………………………………………...98 Table 8. Seemingly Unrelated Regressions for the 2013 presidential election………………….98 Table 9: Education and Secular Ideology as well as Issue Preferences among Iranians………………...129 Table 10: Age and Secular Ideology as well as Issue Preferences among Iranians……………………...129 Table 11: Statistical analysis of the parliamentary turnout of the 2000 election……………….134 Table 12: Statistical analysis of the parliamentary turnout of the 2004 election……………….135 Table 13: Voters’ Occupational Background and education vs. Ahmadinejad’s vote in the first and second round of the 2005 presidential election…………………………………………….157 Table 14: Statistical analysis of the conservative vote in the 2013 presidential election………………..159 Table 15: Regression Estimates of Parliamentary Turnout in Iran’s 10th Majles,2016 election...168 v ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my dissertation committee whose members guided me throughout this intellectual journey. My dissertation would not have been possible without the incredible support and encouragement of my advisor, Andrew Barnes. Thank you for believing in me and helping me to stimulate my capabilities. Your thoughts have been truly significant in my intellectual development. As a professor, your scholarly passion, humbleness, sincerity, and kindness are truly inspirational qualities—providing me with a role-model I could only wish to follow. I am indebted to Landon Hancock for his unwavering support and astute guidance throughout the different stages of this endeavor. My intellectual interest in mobilization—and social movements in particular—was sparked by you, and my advancement in this field of study has been a result of your kind encouragement and constant help. Thank you so much for your valuable commitment to me as both your student and friend. I am truly grateful to Daniel Hawes who opened my eyes to the beautiful complexity and rigor of quantitative methodology in the study of political science and whose keen insights have greatly shaped and guided my work. I sincerely appreciate all of the substantive knowledge and help you have provided me in this process. I would like to especially thank David Kaplan and Mary Ann Heiss for their cogent comments and suggestions on my dissertation. Beyond my committee, I owe special thanks to Arang Keshavarzian, Mohammad Tabaar, Kaveh Ehsani, Ervand Arbrahamian, Ellen Lust, Mehrzad Boroujerdi, and Bernard Hourcade for helpful conversations on Iranian politics and comments on different aspects of my Iranian case study. I have a deep gratitude to Steven Hook, Julie Mazzei, Josh Stacher, Mike Ensley, Renee Johnson, Ryan Claassen, and Christopher Banks at Kent State University for their kind help and support in my Ph.D. studies. I would also like to specially thank to my fellow colleagues at Kent State University for their vi friendship and camaraderie throughout my studies. Thanks are also due to Katherine Yost for helping me in editing this dissertation. To my brother Mohammadreza, thank you for your friendship and the countless hours of conversation about culture and society in Iran that made my thinking on Iran much more intellectually stimulating. I am also specially thankful to Iranian friends for help during my research. My greatest thanks and appreciation are to my family members without whom I could have never undertaken this dissertation. Thanks to Maman, Aghajoon, Zeinab, Mohammadreza, HajKhanom, Firouzeh, and Farzaneh. Your love and unlimited support have been pivotal throughout my education. Thank you, and I love you all. vii Chapter1 Introduction Why do citizens bother to vote in electoral authoritarianism, while their votes will not change the main body of the ruling elite? Following the rise of competitive authoritarianism, scholars and pundits have actively debated the features of these regimes and the prospect of authoritarian change or durability. Much scholarly attention has been paid to the role of elections as a catalyst for change or as an agent of durability in these systems. However, few have addressed the question of political participation in electoral authoritarianism. That is, the origin of political participation has not been the primary focus of scholarship in electoral authoritarianism. The conventional wisdom of scholars generally stresses the role of clientelistic exchanges in mobilizing citizens in electoral authoritarianism. Existing studies highlight the monopoly over patronage resources and constraining citizens’ choice (Magaloni 2006), patronage distribution as a driving force for electoral behavior (Lust 2009; Blaydes 2011), elite co-optation (Gandhi and Przeworski 2006), and the role of natural resources (Mahdavi 2015). Some of these studies correlate the higher participation in these regimes with the lack of knowledge and illiteracy (Blaydes 2011, Pp