ABSTRACT
The Islamic republic's birth was far from certain in the period before the fall of the monarchy and the months following the revolution's victory in February 1979, so much was to be gained through active intervention. To understand the Islamic republic, one would need to understand the constitutional settlement that gave form to the Islamist regime – the nezam as it is known. Not surprisingly, prior to the success and in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, much of the debates tended to focus on the relationship between the concepts of democracy, political Islam, and republic. The contradictions embedded in the Islamic republic's constitutional arrangements carry within them the seeds of the nezam's structural weaknesses, which have tested its legitimacy, in different ways, in the post-Iran-Iraq War period. In the Islamic republic's case, grand coalitions did not coalesce in political parties and therefore the factions of interest and principle converged and diverged for maximizing short-term gains.
