Religion, Law and Development: Studying the Performance of Forty Years of Iran's Legislative System, 1980-2020

A country’s level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita over time had frequently been used as an indicator of economic development. Iran’s per capita income in 1977 (shortly before the 1979 revolution) has been higher than its average income earned per person recorded for all the years of the post-revolutionary era thus far. Therefore, a question is raised whether the country’s lower level of economic development (as measured by its per capita income) has been a result of the religious nature of the key governing bodies of the Islamic Republic of Iran established on the basis of Article Four of the Constitution. It is crucial to investigate the accuracy of the assertion that these institutions might have indeed contributed to the vicious cycles of underdevelopment of the country in order to find alternative solutions to the slow-down in Iran’s economic development process.The authors attempt to answer the following two research questions: 1. In accordance with Douglas North's chain of belief-institution-transformation, how has Iran’s level of national development been influenced by the religious nature of its key political institutions established after the revolution based on Article Four of the Constitution? 2. To what extent have the Guardian Council (Shorā-ye negahbān) and the Expediency Discernment Council (Majmaʿ tashkhis-e maṣleḥat-e nezām) influenced Iran’s economic development in the 1980-2020 period? A careful investigation of this issue is important in order to facilitate the policymakers’ better understanding of the underlying causes of the persistent vicious cycles of the country's underdevelopment in the hope of averting a worsening of the situation. Based on the theoretical framework of Douglas North's notion    of the  belief-institution-economic  performance,  the  authors  hypothesize that religious beliefs have had an impact on the enactment of laws and ultimately on economic development in Iran in the 40-year period from 1980 to 2020. Thematic analysis is used to collect and interpret qualitative data pattern on themes in the data set provided by the Guardian Council (GC) Research Institute related to the GC's decisions and opinions on the laws introduced and forwarded by the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles-e shorā-ye eslāmi or Iran’s parliament) since 1980 (i.e., the starting year of the GC’s function). The main focus of this paper is on the role of the Guardian Council which is an influential institution—because its members perform the task of screening each legislation concerning its constitutionality—and thus has veto power over legislations introduced by the unicameral parliament (Majles). The Expediency Discernment Council (EDC) also has a significant impact on the legislation process by settling disagreements between the Majlis and the GC over laws and deciding which of the two political institutions is right.The findings revealed that a total of 3339 legislation were screened by the GC during the 40-year period, only 175 legislations (5.24 percent) were disapproved, 12 legislations (0.36 percent) remained ambiguous, and 3152 legislations (94.40%) were finally approved. 171 cases (14.73 percent) had also been referred to the EDC at the request of the Majlis. 175 legislations had been rejected by both the GC and the EDC because they were deemed as non-congruent with Islamic law as emphasized in Article four of the Constitution. Among all the rejected legislations, no important piece of legislation with economic implication was observed, with the exception of the case related to the Financial Action Task Group (FATF).  However, the impasse on the FATF legislation as well as the other undecided legislations—particularly on the most challenging foreign policy issues—can be seen as the weaknesses in the political institutions’ decision-making processes. Only the accrued cost of the month-long delays caused by the drawn-out process of screening the legislations might be considered a monetary factor with adverse impact on economic performance of the country, but there might be less evident factors which have indirect development implications. Considering the impact of these issues on the country’s national interest, it is the duty of the experts to further examine the economic and political implications of these delayed legislations and persuade the policymakers to work towards conflict resolution and reach a consensus.