Lack of Mechanisms of Legitimate Force and Absence of Normalized Subjects: A Pathological Approach to the Institution of the State in Iran

Abstract

The state institution in Iran has often failed in creating normalized, law-abiding subjects. More specifically, the state in Iran has been confronted with incomplete mechanisms of legitimate force on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has been unable to produce normalized subjects as an outcome of the conflict among competing truth regimes (Iranian nationalism, Islamism, and Westernization). Therefore, the objective of this article is to examine the reasons behind the state’s failure in constructing and creating normalized subjects. Centering on the concept of governmentality as a later thought of Foucault, the article aims to analyze the institution of the state in contemporary Iran pathologically. This study employs the process-tracing method, a case-study technique based on the premise that explaining a particular phenomenon, such as the pathology of the state in Iran, necessitates a step-by-step examination of a series of causes leading to the effect. Thus, our main effort in the methods section is to delineate the causal mechanism underlying the inefficacy of the state in Iran. The findings indicate that subject-formation and the creation of normalized subjects, as the sole path to exercising legitimate power in the modern era, play an essential role in the formation and persistence of the state institution in Iran, characterized by the rule of law. Therefore, any disruption in the subject-formation process should be interpreted as a deficiency in the state's mechanisms of power and recognized as a vulnerability of the state institution. The conclusion of this article is that the tension among truth regimes in Iran has led to the state’s inability to produce normalized subjects, and the outcome of this deficiency in normalized subjectivity is state inefficacy.