The council of expediency
Crisis and statecraft in Iran and beyond
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10282080 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maziyar Ghiabi (0000-0002-2171-2811, Wadham College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 837-853 |
| Publication date | 2019-04-27 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Middle Eastern Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-3206 • E-ISSN: 1743-7881 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00263206.2019.1585346 |
| PMID | 31391656 |
| OpenAlex | W2940586720 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Giorgio Agamben argues that in contemporary governance the use of 'emergency' is no longer provisional, but 'constitutes a permanent technology of government' and has produced the extrajudicial notion of crisis. The engendering of 'zones of indistinction' between the law and its practice is what Agamben defines as a 'state of exception'. This article adopts the notion enunciated by Agamben and revisits it in the Islamic Republic of Iran. There, the category of crisis has been given, firstly, a juridical status through the institution of maslahat , 'expediency', interpreted in a secular encounter between Shi c a theological exegesis and modern statecraft. Secondly, crisis has not led to the production of a 'state of exception' as Agamben argues. Instead, since the late 1980s, a sui generis institution, the Expediency Council, has presided and decided over matters of crisis. Instead of leaving blind spots in the production of legislative power, the Expediency Council takes charge of those spheres of ambiguity where the 'normal' - and normative - means of the law would have otherwise failed to deliver. This is a first study of this peculiar institution, which invites further engagement with political phenomena through the deconstruction and theorization of crisis politics
Middle East · Middle Eastern studies · Political crisis · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Political Theology and Sovereignty
| Citations per year | 0.8 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2024 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |