Teaching Comparative

What's the opposite of devolution?

Bill Samli reports on the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty web site that the Iranian government is reasserting the traditional centralization of Iranian regimes.

Iran: Executive Seeks To Extend Control As Local Elections Near

"Recent steps by Iran's executive branch to control who runs for the councils -- combined with previous efforts to further curb their powers -- suggest that voter participation might continue to fall despite their political significance...

"The Interior Ministry conducts all the country's elections and, in most cases, it is the 12-member Guardians Council that vets prospective candidates and has supervisory powers. But it is the legislature that has supervisory and vetting powers in the municipal-council elections...
 
"It became increasingly clear by late September, when the Central Committee for Monitoring Council Elections began its activities, that this firewall was crumbling. The central committee comprised five fundamentalist legislators... It selected 90 people from 27 provinces to monitor the elections, and nearly all of them were fundamentalists...

"The municipal councils already have limited powers and responsibilities. They deal with issues like construction permits, garbage collection, and roadwork. The central government is responsible for everything else -- such as education, electricity, and the provision of water.
 
"President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's administration tried to reduce the powers even more through a new law... [under which] the councils would be subordinate to the Interior Ministry and would require its approval before performing many of their functions.

"Councils also currently select mayors. But under the proposed law, the Interior Ministry would essentially perform that function...

"With roughly two months to go before the elections, it appears that the law has been allowed to fade into the background.

"President Ahmadinejad is doing other things that could weaken existing provincial government institutions and create new ones that are more closely connected to the executive branch. It is the presidential administration -- through the Interior Ministry -- that appoints provincial governors-general... issued a directive that linked every provincial office of the Management and Planning Organization with the provincial governor-general...

"The concept of councils at the local level was enshrined in the Iranian Constitution of 1979. But the first council elections did not take place until 20 years later. Then-President Mohammad Khatami's administration sought to decentralize the state apparatus and increase public participation in political affairs and, in general, it emphasized the significance of the councils...


"Scholar Kian Tajbakhsh [at left] asserted at the August 2006 Conference on Iranian Studies in London that the reformists viewed the councils as civil-society organizations. But he noted that reformists did not clarify their agenda, address legal ambiguities, distinguish councils' responsibilities, or even place local institutions in the broader context of an authoritarian state. Tajbakhsh said "energy" for the local councils was closely connected with the wider, national reform movement. When that movement faded, he argued, so did local councils' momentum..."

[Kian Tajbakhsh's web site]

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:56 AM