Populism and Politics in Iran after the Islamic Revolution: Content Analysis of Presidential Speeches from 1989 to 2017

The constant tendency to focus on the people in the political arena can be seen among various groups in contemporary Iran, including the revolutionary leaders and groups focused on mobilizing the masses to confront the previous regime during the revolutionary movement, the rival revolutionary forces during the power struggle of the early years of the Islamic Revolution, and the leaders of the established government arising from the Islamic Revolution with the purpose of advancing their own domestic and foreign objectives and policies in the post-Revolutionary period. The main components of populism include the belief among political forces and leaders in the authenticity and righteousness of the unorganized masses and their direct mobilization in the field of politics as well as the appeal or pretension to redistribute resources among the masses. Thus, the question arises as to whether these components are only specific to some forces and leaders in the post-Revolutionary Iran, or more or less visible among all leaders and forces, regardless of the obvious differences in their political and ideological tendencies.
According to Dorraj (1990), Islamic populism is characterized by its religious character and  authoritarian, messianic, millenarian, and monistic nature coupled with revolutionary zest. Abrahamian (1993) refers to the non-religious and authoritarian populist nature of the state in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Kianpour (2006) views Ahmadinejad’s populism as a result of political representation suffering from the representativeness, or more precisely, a result of the problematic of impossibility and costliness of representing different political identities. Using Dornbusch and Edwards’ model, Farzanegan (2009) examines Ahmadinejad’s populism and finds it to be in accordance with the model. Having analyzed Keyhan and Etemad-e Melli newspapers, Zibakalam et al. (2013) conclude that Keyhan, more readily than Etemad-e Melli, pays attention to the categories supporting the populist discourse. For Farati (2013), populism originates from liberalism. Abdi (2014) considers populism to be a response to the short-term demands of people and a result of the contextual conditions and the increase in oil prices in Iran. Sarzaim (2016) views Ahmadinejad’s populism as the main reason for the lack of development during his presidency. Darvishpour (2022) considers the theory of contradictions of the populist revolution—which is based on critical theory, text analysis, discourse analysis, and post-structuralism—a useful theory in the evaluation of the Islamic Revolution.

The Purpose of Research:

Attempting to investigate populism and politics in Iran during the post-Revolutionary years of 1989–2017, this research tries to show the common and distinctive features the political discourses, produced by various forces and in different periods, as manifested in the presidential speeches.

The technique of documentation and the qualitative content analysis were used for data collection and data analysis, respectively. For the purpose of content analysis, several stages were followed: determining the content, determining the categories, determining the unit of analysis, coding, and conducting an analysis. The study considered the paragraph as the unit of analysis. The statistical population of the research consisted of all the speeches addressed by the presidents during their presidency. The sample population was also determined on the basis of systematic classification.

Concerning the political dimension of populism, 18, 16, 36, and 26 codes were identified in the speeches addressed by Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Khatami, Ahmadinjad, and Rouhani, respectively.  The most frequent code in Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s speech was related to militancy while participation of the marginalized masses, insufficiency of the political systems based solely on representativeness, consideration of himself as the real representative of people, simplicity and avoidance of political complications, and denial of the institutional mechanism were observed as having the equal weight in coding. Anti-elitism is the only component absent from Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s speeches. Concerning Khatami’s speeches, the political dimension of populism was mostly represented in the following components: participation of the marginalized masses, insufficiency of the political systems based solely on representativeness, simplicity and avoidance of political complications, consideration of himself as the real representative of people, and militancy. Anti-elitism and denial of the institutional mechanism were not observed in Khatami’s speeches. Militancy and simplicity and avoidance of political complications were, respectively, found to be the most and least frequent components in Khatami’s political populism. The political dimension of populism in Ahmadinejad’s speeches encompassed all the components, with militancy being the most frequent followed by simplicity and avoidance of political complications, denial of the institutional mechanism, and consideration of himself as the real representative of people. Rouhani also represented all these components, except anti-elitism. In the dimension of cultural populism, all the presidents used the component of admiration for national and religious values and heritage. All the components of the economic dimension were most frequently used by Ahmadinejad, except the component of distrust towards capitalist institutions and procedures. After Ahmadinejad, Rouhani frequently represented the economic dimension, but neither distrust towards capitalist institutions and procedures nor emphasis on income redistribution were found in Rouhani speeches. Among the five components of the economic dimension, Khatami and Hashemi-Rafsanjani only referred to the component of  fault-finding in the economic status quo. Concerning the social dimension of populism, Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad, and Rouhani used all the relevant components, yet Khatami was found to have put no emphasis on the integration of society but on social pluralism.

Owing to the nature of the Islamic Revolution that involved the masses in the political and social arenas, the politicians who came later to the scene had no choice but to tend towards the masses— though with varying degrees of intensity. The political society in Iran has experienced a kind of misunderstanding about populism for several years. This research worked well to show the inaccuracy of the dominant narrative in Iran, proving that populism is a spatiotemporal entity that differs from one society to another. Political leaders in Iran consider people wise and virtuous, and express it by various articulations. Yet the otherness figures differently among the presidents, depending on the circumstances of the time. Framing his articulations within the framework of Islam, Hashemi-Rafsanjani considered the right of the masses from the economic perspective by referring to the component of not encroaching on their rights. The otherness is depicted to be the hypocrites, the Pahlavi regime, and the administration of Mir Hossein Mousavi inside Iran, and the evil non-Islamic states outside the country. People were important to Hashemi-Rafsanjani in an unorganized way, and he considered the participation of the masses as a symbol of real democracy, thus showing little faith in institutions