Contingencies of Structure: How Human Interactions Mold Revolutionary States

Maryam Alemzadeh, University of Oxford

State-building after mass social revolutions has historically happened across conceptually distinguishable phases: a short burst of revolutionary effervescence; a reign of terror imposed by the radical faction; and elimination of opposition by authoritarian state apparatuses. However, the dynamics giving rise to new institutions are highly contingent upon revolutionaries’ everyday thoughts, perceptions, quarrels, and anxieties. I argue that focusing on contingencies through which revolutionary institutions are formed reveals characteristics that distinguish them both from conventional institutions and from other revolutionary cases. I build upon theories of contingent individual action and its collective reverberations in moments of change as well as studies of the role of everyday language and practice in revolutionary processes to examine how everyday contingencies of institution-building leave their mark on moments of consolidation. This paper studies the birth of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in the few months following the February 1979 revolution in Iran. The fate of the Islamic Republic of Iran is entangled with the IRGC’s omnipotence so deeply that imagining counterfactual post-revolutionary scenarios is quite difficult. The IRGC’s prolonged moment of birth amidst a host of rival revolutionary militias, however, was imbued with equally strong contrasting ideas, desires, anxieties, and ambitions of involved individuals, from politicians and grassroots organizers to ordinary volunteers. I zoom in on single instances of day-to-day interaction among involved actors that create new patterns of action, which are then gradually legitimized as “revolutionary.” In the case of the IRGC, both leaders and volunteers enhanced political and military practices based on informal direct action by legitimizing them as more genuinely revolutionary, gradually tying them to the IRGC’s institutional identity. The study is based on in-depth interviews with IRGC members as well as published and archived interviews; newspaper reports; minutes of leadership meetings; and other relevant documents from IRGC archives and publications.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 14. (Dis)assembling the State: New Approaches to Studying State and Society