Democracy and Social Justice: A Case Study on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Constitution

Two concepts of freedom and justice have had floating place in theorizations on political systems and have faced many fluctuations. Liberal democracy theory is the manifestation of the superiority and preference of freedom over justice. Efforts by contemporary Western thinkers, however, to reconcile these two had led to the rise of other theories such as social democracy and associational democracy which stress on justice in creating and perpetuating democracy. From this perspective, every society’s economic conditions provide the grounds for the establishment of democracy. Aiming at approaching true democracy and avoiding deficiencies and shortages characterizing liberal democracy, it seems that in the Islamic Republic of Iran the Constitution has tried to institutionalize a different type of democracy based on religion that is close to modern Western theories, by developing egalitarian mechanisms and by amalgamating freedom and justice. Today, with the new challenges posed by the globalization process, efforts can and must be made to deepen religious democracy by reviving the ideals enshrined in the Constitution, thus the essential task of adapting the Islamic Republic’s system with the changing global and environmental conditions can be undertaken efficiently. For this reason, this article seeks to examine the role of social justice in deepening and perpetuating democracy and making it consistent with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Constitution.