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Reader in International Relations (International Relations)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
School of Global Studies<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kamran Matin acquired his PhD in International Relations at the University of Sussex in 2009. His doctoral thesis retheorised Iran’s experience of modernity and revolution through a critical deployment of the idea of \u2018uneven and combined development\u2019. He became a lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex in 2007.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
ABSTRACT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Democracy Requires Decentralisation: A Critique of the Unitary Nation-State<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nKamran Matin, Sussex University, UK<\/em> Democracy (demos<\/em>\/people + kratos<\/em>\/power) literally means \u2018rule of the people.\u2019 But who constitutes \u2018the people\u2019? As a political subject of rightful sovereignty, \u2018the people\u2019 is neither primordial nor pre-given but a modern construct synonymous with \u2018the nation.\u2019 The way in which \u2018the nation\u2019 is constructed\u2014or \u2018imagined\u2019\u2014has profound implications for the nature of democracy. This paper shows why and how the ideology of \u2018Iranian nationalism\u2019 has defined \u2018the nation\u2019 (i.e., the subject of legitimate sovereignty) in a unitary manner based on Persian identity. The unitary nation-state of Iran is the institutional reflection of this dominant definition of the nation, which, given Iran\u2019s multiple identities and nationalities, is inherently anti-democratic. The paper argues that Iran\u2019s unitary nation-state is the product of the intersection of capitalist development and geopolitics. More specifically, it demonstrates that the geopolitically instigated project of defensive modernisation, initiated during the Qajar era and continued and intensified under the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic, relied on political and cultural centralisation through a hierarchical organisation of the diverse peoples inhabiting Iran, positioning \u2018the Persian\u2019at the apex of political and cultural power. Within this framework, non-Persian peoples were defined as \u2018ethnies\u2019 (qowms<\/em>), denied the right to collective self-determination, and subsumed under the Iranian nation, with Persian as its sovereign language and culture. As a result, as a political-cultural structure, the unitary nation-state of Iran has a Persian centre and several non-Persian peripheries. This peripheralisation has economic aspects as well. In a unitary nation-state, class divisions have a high degree of cultural and linguistic definition, which is central to the uneven development within Iran. Elsewhere, I have conceptualised this circumstance as \u2018inter-subaltern colonialism\u2019. It is evident that the hierarchical structure of Iran\u2019s unitary nation-state is intrinsically anti-democratic, as it deprives non-Persian peoples inhabiting Iranian geography of equal collective rights and makes their ability to participate in the exercise of sovereignty contingent upon cultural and linguistic self-denial. Therefore, any genuine form of democracy in Iran must involve the abolition of the dominance of a centralised unitary nation-state based on only one of the languages and cultures present in Iranian geography. This demand is reflected in the concept of Azadi, central to the slogan Jin, Jiyan, Azadi <\/em>(\u2018Woman, Life, Freedom\u2019). A democratic Iran aligned with this strategic vision must embrace decentralisation through the constitutional recognition of its multi-national composition. Such recognition would enable the democratic co-existence of the peoples inhabiting Iran. The legal and institutional form of this multi-national democracy, based on pluriversal sovereignty, must be determined by the peoples of Iran through democratic processes founded on mutual recognition, political equality, and the right to self-determination<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u06a9\u0627\u0645\u0631\u0627\u0646 \u0645\u062a\u06cc\u0646 ABSTRACT ABSTRACT (ENG) Reader in International Relations (International Relations) School of Global Studies Kamran Matin acquired his PhD in International Relations at the University of Sussex in 2009. His doctoral thesis retheorised Iran’s experience of modernity and revolution through a critical deployment of the idea of \u2018uneven and combined development\u2019. He became a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-102","category-conferences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3088"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3103,"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions\/3103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aciiran.com\/farsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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