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The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Demography and Democracy in Iran

    August 12, 2009 By Brian Klein

    President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might have blamed sinister “foreign powers” for fomenting post-election civil unrest in Iran, but some analysts have fingered another culprit: demography. According to Farzaneh (Nazy) Roudi, program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Population Reference Bureau, two phenomena “provide a backdrop for understanding Iran’s current instability.” First is the country’s youthful population age structure, or “youth bulge”; over 30 percent of Iranians are between the ages of 15 and 29, and 60 percent are under the age of 30. Second is Iran’s surprisingly comprehensive family planning program, which has empowered women to make their own reproductive choices and enter higher education en masse.

    “Youth and women are the two agents of change in the country,” said Robin Wright, Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, in an interview with The New Security Beat. “The youth bulge and the education of women create a very energetic dynamic that defines politics, the economy, security, and social mores in Iran,” she continued.

    This dynamic spurred the post-election protests, a movement that Roudi labels “a manifestation of underlying frustrations” with social and political restrictions, as well as high unemployment. A significant cross-section of the Iranian population—led by but not restricted to young people and women—took to the street, demanding that their voices be heard.

    But what were they calling for? And what chance do they have to succeed?

    “Youth is clearly Iran’s future,” said Wright. However, she cautioned against making assumptions about what young people desire. “They want their votes to be counted, they want a normal state, and they want to work within the international order,” she explained, “[but] they’re not walking away from the Islamic Republic—not yet, at least.”

    Unrest is common in youth-bulge countries, which Foreign Policy’s Richard Cincotta explains are “two-and-a-half times more vulnerable to the onset of political violence or civil conflict than relatively mature populations.” However, Cincotta emphasizes that such movements rarely if ever lead to stable liberal democracy, drawing comparisons between Iran’s current demographic and political situation and that of China twenty years ago—at the time of Tiananmen Square.

    Population Action International’s Elizabeth Leahy agrees. Countries with a youthful age structure are “significantly more prone to conflict and much less democratic, on average, than those that had advanced further along the demographic transition,” she says in an article in ECSP Report 13.

    However, the success of Iran’s award-winning family planning program—which requires all young couples to undergo a family planning course and makes contraception freely available to the public—has set the country “well on its way to a more balanced age structure,” Leahy reports. And “a mature age structure,” Cincotta relates, “tends to serve as a statistical bellwether for durable liberal democracy.”

    So did the clerics unwittingly ensure the elevation of the Republic over Islam by making family planning prevalent in Iranian society?

    “I’m very optimistic” that Iran will eventually achieve democratic reform, Wright concluded. “But the question is—how long is ‘eventually’?”

    Top photo: A protest in front of the Kluczynski Federal Building Plaza in Chicago on June 16, 2009, soon after the disputed Iranian presidential election. Courtesy Flickr user JSisson.

    Second Photo: A young female protester flashes the iconic “V,” a sign of solidarity for supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Courtesy Flickr user .faramarz.

    Topics: conflict, demography, family planning, Iran, maternal health, Middle East, population
    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/18337694112852162181 Geoff Dabelko

      Very useful for thinking about the ambiguity of assigning positive or negative views to youth bulge and stability connections. So commonly the assumption is stability good, change bad when it comes to regimes. A valuable challenge to that perspective yet at the same time pointing out that transitions are almost always rocky and long term.

    • http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/06/25/irans_chinese_future Richard Cincotta

      I wrote this Foreign Policy web-essay to drive home two often misunderstood aspects that surfaced in my prior politico-demographic research. (1) While there is much hype about youth-led revolutionary change, rarely in the historical record do revolutions occurring during a large youth bulge lead directly to high levels of democracy. More often youth-led opposition produces an authoritarian backlash or, if it succeeds, leads to the entrenchment of a new authoritarian or partial-democratic regime. (2) While large youth bulges clearly facilitate youth mobilization and recruitment, the direction of recruitment is not necessarily toward the government opposition. As was demonstrated in Tehran in 2009 (counter-activity of the Basij), Tienanmen Square in 1989(the PLA), and during the period of political protests over US involvement in the Vietnam Conflict (early 1970s), the state often finds it easy to mobilize sympathetic segments of the youth population (rural, lower economic strata, and even some of the same strata as the protestors) to quell dissent.

    • Elizabeth Leahy Madsen

      This post and previous comments have highlighted the uncertain political ramifications of Iran's demographic transition. I find the reference to Iran's family planning program as "surprisingly conservative" worth noting, as it highlights a common belief that religious governments are inherently opposed to providing women and men with access to reproductive health services. While Iran's extremely rapid path to replacement-level fertility provides perhaps the most dramatic example of a religious regime's commitment to relatively comprehensive family planning, it is far from alone. Among Muslim countries, religious and political leaders have also been supportive of family planning programs in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Morocco and Tunisia, among others.

    • Hazel Denton

      Looking at the demographics of the region, surely the big story in Iran is the achievement of replacement level fertility. This highlights what Nazy Roudi said, namely that women are being empowered. It also indicates that they have confidence in the government to continue good accessible health care, confidence that old age financial security will be provided, and a commitment to personal development. Age structure can only highlight one aspect of the population; the independent and effective fertility choices now being made spell out a huge and multi-faceted story.

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