Interventions of post-colonial states in the normative structure of world politics: the case of Iran and the norm of democracy

Within Global IR a constructivist-postcolonial literature is emerging which inquires into how postcolonial states intervene into the normative structure of world politics. This research programme has less covered the question how postcolonial states relate to the international norm of democracy, how and in which ways do they contest this norm, and to which effects? This question is important both to study how the ‘postcolonial condition’ can be overcome, as well as to understand which contours and shapes the norm of democracy might be taking in a multiplex world. To study this multifaceted question from a perspective which acknowledges the shadow of the past, as well as the agency of postcolonial states, Wiener’s concept of norm contestation is applied and further developed in three respects: firstly, by staking out various forms of contestation, that is rejection, strategic contestation and the construction of alternative meaning; secondly, by bringing in identity as a mediating device which impacts the forms of contestation; and thirdly, by studying various sites of contestation where actors beyond the state are also taken into account. This framework is then applied to heuristically study the case of Iran which is of particular interest as it intervenes in the global contestation of the norm of democracy on a dual level of external resistance and internal dissent. Studying Iranian contestation at the UN, within Iran and in Iranian-EU engagement, it becomes evident that during times of geopolitical confrontation with the US, the spectre of the past is produced as present and the form of contestation features dialectics of hypocrisy which harm the norm of democracy. At the same time, we also see a strengthening of the norm of democracy through hybridity both in Iranian encounters with the EU, as well as in the contestation of meanings of democracy within Iran itself.