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Abstract
This paper aims to show that authoritarianism was elevated with the establishment of a rentier state in Iran. Despite several attempts to undergo democratization, the Islamic Republic of Iran was ultimately established in 1979. Although there are numerous possibilities of an emerging authoritarianism due to the disadvantages of a rentier state, there is an argument which refuses to consider the Iranian regime as authoritarian. According to this idea, political party activists and also the election system have prevented the rise of authoritarianism in the country. Thus, the Iranian regime can be considered a hybrid regime. In understanding this idea, with attention given to the theory of hybrid regimes, the present research attempts to analyze the political factors that signify authoritarianism and also democracy in the political structure of the Iranian government.
Introduction
Hossien Mahdavi (1970)1 considers rentier states as those states that receive, on a regular basis, substantial amounts of petro-dollars as an external rent. External rents are in turn defined as rentals paid by foreign individuals, concerns or governments of a given country. Mahdavi believes that massive amounts of foreign currency and credit, generated by petroleum development, flooded into the state coffers and turned at least some oil-producing countries into rentier states. The problem is that the oil revenues received by the governments of the oil exporting countries have very little to do with production processes of their domestic economies and the inputs from the local economies.
Consequently, distributing rents is the main function of rentier states. In addition, the rents empower the state and break linkages between the people and the state, making rentier states independent from society. It must be considered that rentier states are likely to tax their populations less heavily and in most cases taxation is low. Therefore, the rentier state maximizes its power via the strength of its authority and its dependency on oil revenue. In other words, oil revenue is the source of a rentier state's power both domestically and globally. This makes rentier states autonomous from society, societal demands, and political accountability and transparency. Thus, it can be seen that an authoritarianism regime is one product of a rentier state.
In the case of Iran, oil income accounts for 50% of the national budget and...