From democracy to theocracy: the causes and processes of the evolution of political discourse from democracy to religion

Evolution of government in the new world has shown that traditional and authoritarian governments and even pre-modern religious democracies have progressed toward becoming a democratic order after reforms and social movements, while in Iran this movement has been nothing but vague. As several decades after the Constitutional Revolution and the attempt to establish democratic institutions, a religious government was finally formed in Iran following the 1979 revolution. This is why the political discourse in Iran after a few decades of democratization has led to theocracy. This study examines the motivations and causes of this discursive turning point and the changing intellectual and political atmosphere of Iranian society through the method of historical analysis. This change, indeed, includes various aspects, some of which will be studied in this article. This study shows that factors such as the change in the social fabric of Iran in the 1930s and 1350s; the emergence of identity challenges among the various strata of the Iranian society; the shift in the notion of democracy in the political literature of revolutionary militants; the break in the relations of political actors; the political, intellectual, and organizational failure of the democratic forces to lead and organize the struggle; and finally, the ability of political Islam in the design of the theory of government and in the battle of symbols led to a shift that aspires toward theocracy.