In this project, Prof. Susan Wright and Dalir Barkhoda explore one of the fundamental challenges in Iran over the last century: what form of governance is appropriate for the country. This issue has shaped political movements, revolutions, and opposition struggles, resurfacing most recently during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, erupted in 2022. While this movement is widely known for its focus on women’s rights and participation, the debate over the future forms of governance was a central and divisive issue among opposition groups.

During the 1979 revolution, Shuras emerged as grassroots entities in factories, workplaces, urban neighborhoods, and rural communities across Iran, as well as in Kurdistan and Turkmen Sahra, where they played a role in local governance. Workers in industries, including the oil sector, established Shuras to collectively manage production, while ethnic groups such as the Kurds and Turkmens attempted to use Shuras to local governance. However, in retrospect, it is known that while different groups—Islamists, Leftists, and ethnic rights movements—used the term Shura, they each had different interpretations of its meaning and purpose.
In this research project we use archived ethnographic data from the 1970s (collected from the Doshman Ziari region, Fars province), archival historical materials, and interviews with key actors, especially from the Kurdish movement in Iran, to ask: What were the varied attempts to implement Shura as a model of participatory governance? How have social, political, and economic forces impeded the transformation of this participatory initiative into a stable political framework?

More specifically, our research examines the following questions:

1. What were the specific socio-political conditions that facilitated the emergence and popularity of Shuras from late 1970s to 1983?
2. How did Shuras attempt to actualize participatory governance, and what were their primary strategies and practices?
3. What challenges and obstacles did Shuras face in the process of institutionalization, and how did these affect their sustainability and impact on Iran's political landscape?
4. How can this exploration of the socio-political conditions that catalyzed the evolution of Shuras during the Islamic Revolution provide comparable insights into current movements towards participatory governance within and beyond Iran?

By placing Iran’s historical experiences within a comparative global context, this research aims to provide insights into how grassroots democracy can evolve and the challenges it faces when institutionalized. The renewed debates about participatory governance in Iran today highlight the continuing struggle to define an alternative to authoritarian rule—one that remains deeply contested among various political and social groups.