ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the COVID-19 outbreak as the case to study how a crisis turned into an opportunity for the authoritarian leaders of Iran to employ the youth forces in semi-military capacities, namely the Basij. Following a literature review on patron-client networks and loyal youth movements in undemocratic regimes, the chapter explains how the 2020 pandemic provided the regime with institutional chances for further authoritarianism through militarization across the national and local governments of Iran. This chapter discusses how, in Iran, the government systematically and occasionally attempted to expand its loyal networks across different periods and particularly in the case of COVID-19 crisis in 2020 when an opportunity was provided for the paramilitary loyal forces of the Basij to expand their scope over public and private spheres.
