Accounting for Pluralistic Foreign Policy and Political Elite Competition: Contending Bureaucratic Networks in Post-Revolutionary Iran’s Diplomatic Apparatus

The state scholarship has long posited that fragmented state institutions in environments of elite conflict and factionalism weaken regimes’ staying power (O’Donnell Schmitter and Whitehead 1986, Huntington 1991, Gandhi and Przewoski 2006, Magaloni 2008, Svolik 2009 2012). The neo-Weberian literature suggests that states’ inherent tendency to fragment and diversify must be circumvented, as it challenges states’ sovereignty and unifying role (Poggi 1977, Du Gay and Scott 2010). Nonetheless, since the 1979 revolution, Iran’s political system hinges upon a dual sovereignty, constitutionally divided between the government (vox populi) and the Supreme Leader (vox dei). This fragmentation of political authority translates into competing regime elites and state institutions’ duplication between those answering to elected and non-elected bodies. In this “house with many masters” (Buchta 1998), in which elite and state cohesion are missing, authoritarian endurance is puzzling (Keshavarzian 2005). Because their relation to regime strength seems unclear, scholars minimally assess the implications of elite pluralism and bureaucratic jurisdictional overlap i.e. causing policy inefficiency, structural burden –– “schizophrenia” (Chehabi 1991, Djalili 1989 2001, Buchta 2000). Moreover, the foreign policy literature has traditionally opposed two stances: (i) since the 1990s, Iran has conducted “Thermidorian” diplomacy to normalize the regime and enhance its durability (Adelkhah Bayart and Roy 1993, Mozaffari 1999), (ii) this attempt is a “reformist illusion” veiling the continuation of revolutionary diplomacy (Djalili 2001, Terhalle 2009). More generally, few works have addressed diplomats within trajectories of state reforms and engaged with the bureaucratic politics literature (Haglund 2015). The fragmentation of diplomatic apparatuses remains unexamined in relation to fragmented political networks and policy agendas. This article contends that, while fragmented state institutions sustain cleavages between elite networks and hamper uniform policymaking, they nonetheless provide the architecture for a ‘division of bureaucratic labor’, accommodating competing policy agendas. Elite conflict is thus regulated and channeled within the state, and institutional fragmentation ultimately fosters regime durability. Precisely, we show that in allowing the co-existence of multiple networks within the diplomatic apparatus, institutional fragmentation makes Iran’s “multiple-voice” diplomacy (Djalili 1989) a symptom of regime strength, not weakness. We provide an empirical assessment of this ‘division of diplomatic labor’, using Social Network Analysis (SNA) and data analysis. We rely on biographical (prosopographic) data of 158 senior Iranian diplomats’ educational and career trajectories. We built a scaled 1-mode “co-affiliation” matrix, in which two diplomats’ tie constitutes the amount of sub-bureaucratic segments shared throughout one’s career. SNA and centrality analyses (t-tests) allow to identify clusters of diplomats who underwent similar career trajectories. Complemented by multiple linear regressions, the same tools allow to explain the structuring of networks of diplomats that carry political networks’ foreign policy agendas, using variables like educational trajectories. We also used semi-structured interviews conducted with Iranian actors, and archival work. We show that while a central cluster of diplomats mostly trained at the ministerial ‘School of International Relations’ leads the governmental agenda of diplomatic opening towards European and Asian powers, a peripheral cluster that underwent distinct trajectories sustains Iran’s revolutionary diplomacy in the Near East and Persian Gulf.