BOOK REVIEWS, BOOK TALKS
Creating Local Democracy in Iran: State Building and the Politics of Decentralization. Published by Cambridge University Press: 2022
Book: Creating Local Democracy in Iran: State Building and the Politics of Decentralization. Published by Cambridge University Press: 2022
https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/politics-international-relations/middle-east-government-politics-and-policy/creating-local-democracy-iran-state-building-and-politics-decentralization?format=HB
Reviews & endorsements
‘Kian Tajbakhsh's study of local government under the Islamic Republic of Iran is based on careful and painstaking analysis of administrative and legal documents and is unmatched by any in current Iranian [studies] and history.’ Saïd Amir Arjomand, State University of New York
‘This deeply personal and academically rigorous account of the efforts to advance political decentralization in Iran raises critical questions for scholars of governance and democracy. By documenting how decentralization was as likely to be embraced by supporters of centralized state power as by reform advocates or even pragmatic technocrats, we are shown the complexities inherent in building democracy from the ground up.’ Diane E. Davis, Harvard University
‘Kian Tajbakhsh’s understanding of Iran is manifest on every page of this book. He convincingly argues, much to his own discontent, how the authoritarian regime consolidates its rule through political decentralization. His work is important for anyone interested in local democracy – a powerful read.’ Peter Knip, Director of VNG International (The Hague)
‘Kian Tajbakhsh beautifully documents the tragedy of municipal democracy in Iran, from its hopeful beginnings in the mid-1990s to its defeat a decade later. Tajbakhsh was both a scholarly observer of the democratization movement and a participant, whose detention in Iran delayed this long-awaited book for years.’ Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina
Prof. Ervand Abrahamian (One of world’s leading historians of modern Iran) @50:23:
“In the last few years there have been at least seven major academic works on the question of democracy and the obstacles to democracy in Iran since 1979. If one looks at these books I would say by far the most thorough the most empirical the most innovative work is Kian’s work here; it's not only dealing with local politics which is stressed but I think it's also very much dealing on the national level of what the problems of democracy [are in Iran].”
Book Reviewed by Prof. Lisa Anderson in Foreign Affairs
In this unusually revealing account of decentralization efforts in Iran, Tajbakhsh provides a deeply researched and often moving account of how contemporary politics in Iran actually works. Deploying a remarkable mix of personal memoir and professional expertise—Tajbakhsh was a student, an urban planner, a government adviser, and ultimately a political prisoner in Iran—he endeavors to make sense of his work there, notably the failure of an initiative to decentralize local government by authorizing elections for local government councils. In the late 1990s and the first decade of this century, reformists promoted decentralization as a way of making local government more responsive to the needs and desires of citizens. Technocrats framed such efforts as integral to the strengthening of local administration. And ruling Islamists supported decentralization as an opportunity for public mobilization in support of the regime. The reformists lost, partly because of developments on the national and international stage but also, as Tajbakhsh persuasively suggests, because of flaws in their understanding of decentralization itself, which they often equated with democratization. Tajbakhsh shows how local governments were, in fact, deprived of taxing authority, which kept local policy tightly linked to central government largess. Candid, rueful, scholarly, and reflective, this book opens a revealing window onto everyday politics in Iran.
The Muslim World Book Review, 44:2, 2024
The book stands out as an excellent intellectual exercise in combining theory and data to make sense of socio-political developments. A source of first-hand knowledge and a collection of findings of empirical research, the book fills a serious gap in Iranian studies for which the writer deserves accolades. As such, it is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the internal dynamics of Iranian politics and society.
(2023). Iranian Studies doi:10.1017/irn.2023.50
Khatam, A. (2023). Kian Tajbakhsh, Creating Local Democracy in Iran: State Building and the Politics of Decentralization (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022). x 303 pp. (GBP)75. ISBN 9781009160919. Iranian Studies, 1-4. doi:10.1017/irn.2023.50
Creating Local Democracy in Iran by Kian Tajbakhsh is one of the few books…that examines the formation of city councils in Iran in the late 1990s. Creating Local Democracy in Iran engages its reader with many concrete aspects of city governance in Iran, with the formation of local councils as one of the main projects of democratization. Tajbakhsh’s book could help build a better analytical framework for examining local governments [and city planning]. Creating Local Democracy is a rare and admirable attempt to spark debate, and one can hope that its analytical questions and empirical data encourages other researchers to join the field.
Reviewed by Antony Wynn (2023) Creating Local Democracy in Iran, Asian Affairs, 54:3, 583-585, DOI: 10.1080/03068374.2023.2244316
The value of the book is that it is both academically analytical and also a personal account of good intentions leading to the usual destination. It gives details of local budgets and elections, followed by the author’s empirical observations of the results, with revealing interviews with many senior and mid-level government officials. Political scientists will find the analysis useful, while the personal insights will give those with a general interest in the interior workings of Iran a view not easily obtainable elsewhere.
Reviewed by Nikouei, M. (2023). Creating local democracy in iran: State building and the politics of decentralization. The Middle East Journal, 77(2), 231-233.
Kian Tajbakhsh's book Creating Local Democracy in Iran is a welcome and much needed addition to the developing corpus of expert literature on local democracy. In the broader context, the book provides an in-depth, fascinating case study on how, when, and why authoritarian regimes opt for decentralization and employ democratic tools to achieve their nondemocratic goals. Tajbakhsh critically examines the nuances of the interaction between law and politics and that interaction's impact on the project of local democracy in contemporary Iran.
BOOK TALKS
Fall 2022: Princeton (in person); SAIS John Hopkins (online); Columbia (in person)
Spring 2023: Stanford, UCLA, UC Irvine (all in person); Harvard Kennedy School (in person); Yale (zoom), Yale (in person)
BOOK Launch and Panel Discussion at Columbia University (Video): with Profs. Lisa Anderson (Pol. Sci. IR), Ervand Abrahamian (History, Pol. Sci.), Weiping Wu (Urban Planning).
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS): Book Launch with Dr. Vali Nasr Professor and former Dean, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Rethinking Iran Book Forum
Stanford University: What the Failure of Local Democracy in Iran tells us about Islamist Authoritarianism. March 2, 2023
Video:
My book talk was followed by a conversation with Prof. Abbas Milani, Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University; and Prof. Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Book talk and Mahsa events (video). www.Iran1400.org.
Iran Circle Book Presentation in Persian, January 22, 2023 https://www.irancircle.org/post/local-democracy-in-iran
