Tehran municipality created in 1999 the neighborhood councils, literally called “neighborhood associations”. They are defined as voluntary, collaborative, non politic and nongovernmental associations. Their members are volunteers elected each four years by universal suffrage. These atypical institutions, at the crossroads between NGO’s, local institutions and civic associations, are consultative bodies meant to enforce consultation (moshâverat) and participation (moshârekat) between all stakeholders. The “top-down” creation of these participatory associations in the Iranian political context taking both from Islam and "Western modernity" raises many questions: Are they democratic or control association? Do they redefine the relations between citizens and political institutions or reinforce the authoritarian political system? The hypothesis this paper will discuss is that if not all associations are “schools of democracy”, they can’t just be analyzed as authoritarian regime guardians. On one side, the neighborhood associations reproduce elements of the Iranian political context within their own organizations and within their relationship with other actors. In this perspective, they are institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran: The religious temporality, the figure of the shahid, the importance of the mosque as a meeting place or the institution vocabulary are “figures" of the Republic we can observe at the neighborhood level. On the other side, the setting up of a competition with more open procedures has enabled new actors to access to this local arena. Therefore the councils represent new spaces of dialogue and action in the political system that can’t be ignored. This duality is fundamental for understanding the neighborhood council. This paper is based on a field research conducted in Tehran in many neighborhood councils since 2007 (participant observation, semi-structured interviews with the various stakeholders (City advisors, citizens, researchers, state representatives, religious field actors...).
