Elections and Political Stability in Islamic Republic of Iran

This essay is mainly pursues to analyze Iranian elections to explain the fact that, in addition to positive and security-building functions of elections in Iran, there are also election-related factors that prepare ground for different levels of political instability, social crisis and security challenges in the country. Those above mentioned factors are rooted in interactions between three electoral actors: 1) governmental administrative and monitoring institutions; 2) competition pattern of political parties and groups; and 3) electoral behavior of public and social groups. Applying David Sander's approach, this essay explores security-political consequences and challenges of people's electoral behavior and pattern of electoral competition among political parties and groups on political instability indicators (political regime and socio-political solidarity).According to findings of our research, and based on framework of electoral actors interaction pattern, there have been a circle of security situation in Iranian elections consisting of a threefold pattern: 1) fairly calm elections; 2) challenging elections; and 3) electoral crisis. Considering the vulnerabilities of election system in Iran, it seems that electoral behavior pattern of actors tends to be more challenging and destabilizing.