From Protest to Political Agency
Assessing the Gap Between Social Mobilization and Revolutionary Capacity in Iran
Iran has experienced repeated waves of protest challenging both government policies and the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic. These movements demonstrate deep public dissatisfaction and the willingness of different social groups to resist state authority. Yet recurring protests have not, by themselves, produced a coherent political capacity capable of coordinating collective action, establishing representative mechanisms, and creating an alternative institutional order.
This article examines the distinction between social mobilization and political agency. It argues that widespread rejection of a governing system does not necessarily imply the existence of an organized political force capable of replacing it. Political agency requires organization, coordination, social trust, representative legitimacy, a minimum political programme, and the capacity to influence or assume responsibility for political power.
The article proposes a seven-dimensional framework for examining these conditions. It does not assume that Iranian society lacks political agency. Rather, it argues that such agency exists in fragmented, uneven, and often localized forms, while its consolidation into a nationally coordinated and institutionally credible political capacity remains unresolved.
The central question is whether Iran’s crisis of legitimacy can develop into a revolutionary situation and a viable political transition.
1. Introduction: When Does Protest Become Political Agency?
Since 2017, Iran has experienced several major waves of protest, including the demonstrations of 2017–2018, November 2019, the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, and the nationwide protests that began in late December 2025. These movements have increasingly moved beyond specific grievances to challenge the legitimacy of the political system itself.
The protests of late 2025 and January 2026 were particularly significant. Initially driven by economic grievances, they spread across the country and developed into a broader political confrontation. The subsequent crackdown and extensive internet shutdown demonstrated the state’s continuing capacity for coercion. A UK House of Commons Library briefing published in January 2026 reported that the protests had largely subsided by mid-January and that security forces remained loyal to the state.
The political context changed further following the outbreak of the US-Israeli war against Iran on 28 February 2026. The conflict resulted in the deaths of senior political and military figures, extensive destruction, and further economic disruption. Yet the Islamic Republic’s governing structures survived the initial leadership crisis and continued to exercise power, as Eric Lob discussed in his October 2026 analysis for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
These developments raise a fundamental question: under what conditions can widespread public opposition become a political force capable of transforming the existing order?
The argument here is not that Iran lacks revolutionary potential or that its population lacks political agency. Rather, the relationship between social resistance and organized political capacity must be examined independently of the intensity of public anger. The decisive issue is whether different forms of opposition can develop into a credible and sustained political alternative.
2. Social Agency and Political Agency: A Necessary Distinction
Social agency and political agency are closely related, but they are not interchangeable.
Social agency refers to the capacity of individuals and groups to act collectively, express grievances, resist imposed conditions, defend their interests, and influence their social environment. It can be observed in demonstrations, strikes, professional associations, local networks, cultural resistance, and everyday forms of non-cooperation.
Political agency involves an additional dimension: the ability to translate collective action into organized political influence. It includes formulating common objectives, establishing representative structures, coordinating different constituencies, negotiating competing interests, and influencing or assuming responsibility for political power.
Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration provides a starting point for understanding agency as the capacity of actors to intervene in and transform social structures. Hannah Arendt, in *The Human Condition*, offers a complementary perspective by emphasizing collective action and the public realm in which individuals become political actors.
A society can therefore demonstrate considerable social agency while remaining politically fragmented. It can mobilize against a government without agreeing on who should represent it, how a transition should be managed, or what institutions should replace the existing system.
This distinction is particularly important in Iran, where rejection of the Islamic Republic has become a point of convergence among diverse constituencies, while agreement on the leadership and nature of a future political order remains far less evident.
3. Seven Dimensions for Assessing Political Agency
This article proposes seven analytical dimensions for examining the relationship between social opposition and organized political capacity. They constitute a heuristic framework developed for this analysis, not a universally established or quantitatively validated model.
3.1 Critical Political Awareness
The first dimension is the ability to identify the structural causes of political, economic, and social problems rather than interpreting each crisis as an isolated failure.
The tendency of protesters to move beyond specific economic complaints and question the legitimacy of the political system suggests an important development in political awareness. However, rejecting the existing order does not necessarily imply agreement on the principles of a future one.
3.2 Independent and Sustainable Organization
Political agency requires organizational structures capable of surviving beyond individual demonstrations and moments of crisis.
These may include professional associations, labour networks, local committees, student organizations, political platforms, and decentralized coalitions. The important question is whether they can maintain continuity, coordinate activities, and develop common objectives under pressure.
In Iran, independent organizations face severe legal, institutional, and security restrictions. Organizational capacity is consequently often fragmented, localized, and vulnerable to repression.
3.3 Social Trust and Cooperation
Political transformation requires cooperation among groups that may differ in class, ideology, ethnicity, religion, geography, and political experience.
A movement cannot become nationally representative simply by demonstrating widespread dissatisfaction. It must establish sufficient trust among different constituencies to negotiate differences and pursue common objectives.
This does not require ideological uniformity. Political maturity is reflected in the ability to cooperate despite disagreement.
3.4 Sustained Collective Action
The ability to maintain collective action over time is another essential dimension.
Demonstrations can generate visibility, solidarity, and pressure. Political influence becomes more substantial when mobilization is sustained through strikes, coordinated campaigns, professional networks, and civic initiatives.
The question is not merely how many people participate, but whether a movement can preserve coordination, adapt to repression, and maintain pressure beyond spontaneous public reactions.
3.5 Representative Legitimacy
A political movement needs credible mechanisms through which different social constituencies can express their interests and participate in collective decision-making.
Representation cannot be established solely through media visibility, social-media activity, historical status, or claims made by political figures abroad.
Nor does the absence of a single leader necessarily indicate political weakness. Decentralized movements can possess considerable organizational capacity without a central figure.
The essential issue is whether claims of representation are supported by credible connections to constituencies and mechanisms for accountability and consultation.
3.6 A Credible Alternative Political Programme
Rejecting an existing political system is different from agreeing on what should replace it.
A viable alternative does not require everyone to share the same ideological vision. It does require agreement on a minimum political framework: political legitimacy, individual rights, the rule of law, territorial integrity, transitional authority, and procedures through which citizens will determine the country’s future system.
Without such a framework, opposition can remain united primarily by what it rejects rather than by what it intends to establish.
3.7 The Capacity to Influence the Exercise of Power
The final dimension concerns the ability to convert political mobilization into practical influence over institutions and decision-making.
This may involve sustained economic disruption, institutional defections, negotiations, alternative representative structures, or the ability to establish credible transitional arrangements.
Political capacity is measured not only by the ability to challenge authority, but also by the ability to assume responsibility for political decisions and institutional change.
Together, these dimensions help distinguish social resistance from the consolidation of political agency. They are not a rigid checklist: political movements can develop unevenly, and different dimensions may emerge at different stages of a crisis.
4. What the Evidence Tells Us About Iran
Available evidence points to substantial political dissatisfaction and recurring mobilization, alongside serious constraints on independent organization and political representation.
The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s BTI 2026 Country Report: Iran describes continued repression, economic deterioration, institutional weaknesses, and widespread dissatisfaction during February 2023–January 2025. It provides structural background but should not be treated as a direct assessment of developments after January 2025.
The protests of December 2025 and January 2026 demonstrated how economic grievances could develop into broader political opposition. The UK House of Commons Library’s briefing of 30 January 2026 describes their geographical spread, the state’s response, the internet shutdown, and the continued loyalty of security forces.
These protests demonstrated considerable capacity for collective resistance, but did not establish that a unified political organization or nationally representative alternative had emerged.
A Reuters report published on 15 January 2026 described divisions among major exiled opposition factions and the difficulty of measuring their domestic support. It also highlighted the challenge of establishing an inclusive movement representing Iran’s social, religious, ethnic, and economic diversity.
These observations do not prove that political networks inside Iran are absent, or that opposition organizations abroad lack domestic support. They indicate that the relationship between political organizations and the wider population remains difficult to establish and assess.
5. Labour and Professional Mobilization: Evidence of Agency, but Not Necessarily National Coordination
Labour protests provide an important perspective because they demonstrate forms of collective action that can be more sustained and organized than spontaneous street demonstrations.
The Workers Right Watch semi-annual report covering January–June 2026, published on 31 July 2026, recorded 111 labour protests across 25 cities, including 28 strikes accompanied by protest gatherings.
These figures require caution. The report was produced by Volunteer Activists and draws on media reporting, social-media analysis, and contacts inside Iran. Its authors acknowledge that internet shutdowns and restricted access to information limited the completeness of their documentation.
Nevertheless, the report provides evidence that labour mobilization continued amid repression, economic disruption, and armed conflict.
Workers, teachers, retirees, and other professional groups can develop organizational experience through repeated collective action. However, sectoral organization does not automatically translate into national political coordination. A labour network may organize a strike over unpaid wages without possessing the reach or mandate to coordinate with other sectors around a national transition.
The challenge is how different forms of social organization can cooperate without losing their independence or becoming subordinate to a single political faction.
6. The Opposition and the Problem of Representation
The Iranian opposition is not a single political actor. It includes monarchists, republicans, left-wing groups, ethnic and regional organizations, reformist currents, liberal democrats, civil-society activists, and individuals who reject established political labels.
These groups differ in their preferred political systems, historical interpretations, strategic priorities, leadership claims, and approaches to international engagement.
Such diversity is not inherently a weakness. Political pluralism is a normal feature of democratic societies. The problem is the absence of sufficiently credible mechanisms through which these differences can be negotiated and translated into a common political framework.
The January 2026 Reuters report illustrates divisions among prominent exiled opposition factions and uncertainty about the extent of their domestic support.
A democratic transition cannot rest solely on declarations by political leaders or the popularity of individual figures in media environments. Its legitimacy must ultimately derive from the freely expressed will of the Iranian people through credible political and electoral procedures.
7. Social Media: Visibility Is Not the Same as Political Organization
Digital platforms have transformed the political environment in which the Iranian opposition operates. They allow information to circulate rapidly, expose abuses, create solidarity, and facilitate communication across geographical boundaries.
However, digital visibility should not be confused with organizational capacity. Followers, views, reposts, hashtags, and online declarations cannot independently establish the size of a political constituency or support for a particular programme.
Online activity may create the impression of a unified movement even when participants disagree on fundamental political questions. Conversely, the absence of visible online coordination does not prove that no organization exists, particularly under conditions of surveillance, repression, and internet disruption.
Mohsen Askari’s 2026 study, Iran’s Revolutionary Situation and Digital Authoritarianism: 1979 vs. 2026, examines how information control, elite divisions, coordination, and the reliability of coercive institutions can shape whether protest develops into a revolutionary situation.
Communication technologies can facilitate political organization, but cannot substitute for trust, representation, institutional continuity, or a credible political programme.
8. From Rejection to a Shared Political Project
One of the most important questions facing Iranian society is not simply what it rejects, but what it is prepared to establish in its place.
Opposition to the Islamic Republic may unite people with very different political beliefs. Some support a constitutional monarchy, others a parliamentary or presidential republic, while many may not yet have reached a firm conclusion about the future constitutional structure.
A democratic transition does not require prior agreement on every constitutional detail. It requires agreement on the procedures and principles through which those details will be decided.
A minimum common framework could include:
- Popular sovereignty as the source of political legitimacy.
- Protection of individual rights and fundamental freedoms.
- Equal citizenship regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, or political belief.
- Freedom of political association, expression, and the press.
- Independent judicial institutions and the rule of law.
- A transitional authority with a clearly defined and limited mandate.
- Independent electoral administration.
- Free and competitive elections through which citizens determine the future political system.
- A peaceful and accountable transfer of power.
Such a framework would not predetermine whether Iran becomes a republic or a constitutional monarchy. It would establish democratic procedures through which that question could be resolved.
Distinguishing agreement on democratic procedures from disagreement over the final political model could provide a foundation for broader cooperation. Without this distinction, political competition risks becoming a struggle over who has the exclusive right to represent the opposition.
9. The Historical Comparison: 1979 and the Limits of Analogy
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 is an unavoidable reference point in discussions of revolutionary change. However, it was not simply the result of widespread dissatisfaction. It involved mass mobilization, political networks, leadership, organizational structures, divisions within the ruling establishment, and a weakening of the state’s ability to maintain control.
Jack Goldstone’s work on revolutionary theory emphasizes the interaction of structural pressures, political leadership, ideology, elite conflict, and factors that sustain or weaken regime stability.
Contemporary Iran differs substantially from the Iran of 1978–1979. The Islamic Republic has developed extensive security institutions and mechanisms of political control. It has also experienced several protest cycles and adapted its methods of repression and information management.
The events of 2026 further demonstrate the importance of institutional continuity. Despite the deaths of senior figures and destruction caused by war, the governing system survived the initial leadership crisis and continued to exercise power.
The lesson of 1979 is not that revolution must follow a particular sequence. Mass dissatisfaction becomes transformative when it interacts with organizational capacity, political coordination, and changes in the balance of power. Historical analogy can clarify the questions that need to be asked, but cannot predict the outcome of a future crisis.
10. What Would Indicate a Transition to a Revolutionary Situation?
It is useful to distinguish between indicators of widespread dissatisfaction and indicators that the political balance itself is changing.
The first category includes recurring demonstrations, strikes, public rejection of government policies, declining electoral participation, and anti-system slogans. These developments can indicate a serious crisis of legitimacy.
The second concerns the emergence of a credible alternative political authority, sustained coordination among different social constituencies, significant divisions within the ruling elite, and weakening or fragmentation of institutions responsible for enforcing state authority.
A revolutionary situation involves more than a government facing widespread opposition. It involves a challenge to its practical ability to maintain political authority.
Askari’s 2026 analysis provides a framework for examining this process, while the UK House of Commons Library’s assessment of the January 2026 protests offers an empirical counterpoint: despite the scale of demonstrations, security forces remained loyal and no publicly reported defections had occurred.
This does not prove that such conditions could never emerge. It illustrates why the scale of protest alone is insufficient to establish that a revolutionary situation has developed.
The essential question is whether political opposition is becoming a credible and sustained alternative to the existing exercise of power.
11. Conclusion: Transforming Discontent into Political Capacity
Iranian society has demonstrated considerable capacity for resistance. Repeated protest movements, labour mobilization, professional activism, local networks, and growing rejection of the existing political order all indicate deep and persistent dissatisfaction.
But social resistance does not automatically establish a consolidated political force capable of managing a transition.
The distinction between social agency and political agency helps explain this gap. The central challenge is to develop the political capacity through which different social constituencies can cooperate, establish credible mechanisms of representation, formulate a minimum common programme, and create institutions capable of managing a democratic transition.
This requires more than public declarations, online campaigns, or competition among political figures. It requires political responsibility, organizational continuity, trust, negotiation, and acceptance of democratic procedures, even when they produce outcomes that individual groups may not prefer.
The absence of a single leader should not be confused with the absence of political agency. Nor should the existence of prominent leaders be confused with the existence of a representative movement.
The decisive question is whether Iranian society can transform its diverse forms of resistance into a political capacity that is nationally credible and institutionally viable.
A crisis of legitimacy can weaken a political system. A society’s capacity to determine what comes next depends on something more: its ability to organize political choice, establish legitimate institutions, and assume responsibility for the future.
The transition from protest to political agency is therefore not merely a question of mobilization. It is a question of political organization, democratic legitimacy, and the capacity to build an alternative order.
Methodological Note
The seven dimensions are an analytical framework developed by the author, not a validated scale. This analysis draws on publicly available sources and does not predict political developments. Lack of documentation does not prove lack of activity.