Sociological Analysis of Proportionality in the Representation of Iranian Society: Class and Demographic Dimensions of Representation in Iran After the Islamic Revolution

The structure of the society and the composition of political elites have changed significantly in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. Previous research has been less attentive to the relationship between the sociodemographic composition of the society and that of the elected members of the Iranian parliament. The current study utilizes the dataset on the occupational distribution of the general population and that of members of parliament (MPs) in ten parliamentarian cycles from 1980 to 2020. Using state-society relation approaches as well as the cultural reproduction theory, the mechanism of exchange between elites and society in post-revolution Iran are explained. This study observes strong representation of professional and managerial class, which lends partial support to liberal-pluralist theory of state-society relations. Evidence also supports a class-based approach in that the lower class is underrepresented in the parliament, and that education itself is class-based. Dissimilarity index reveals that while ethnic and recognized religious minorities are equally represented, women, Iranian lower occupational groups, and younger age groups are not fairly represented in parliament, which in turn, postulates that the revolutionary ideal of fair representation of various segments of the society, particularly socially disadvantaged groups, has not been fully realized yet in a parliamentary level.