Towards a post-imperial and Global IR?

It is broadly accepted that IR has Eurocentric roots, and for many Eurocentrism continues. This can be attributed to its ‘lack of “openness”’ towards the ‘international’,Footnote ¹⁴ a ‘geo-cultural division of knowledge production’ based on a ‘modern West versus traditional non-West’,Footnote ¹⁵ and a reluctance to move ‘beyond’ disciplinary boundaries.Footnote ¹⁶ How the discipline should move away from its Eurocentric roots continues to be debated. As noted above, one part of the debate is how IR should deal with the categorisation of West and non-West and the knowledge on which these categorisations are based.

An influential intervention in this regard is the Global IR project. For Amitav Acharya, Global IR aims to transcend the West/non-West, ‘or any similar binary and mutually exclusive categories’, towards ‘greater inclusiveness and diversity’. He argues that ‘while these categories might persist as terms of convenience’, the aspiration is that they ‘lose analytical significance in the world of Global IR’.Footnote ¹⁷ Crucially, the project was put forward in Acharya’s capacity as the president of the International Studies Association, demonstrating legitimate leadership of the IR community. However, the West/non-West bifurcation as a means of addressing Eurocentrism has been critiqued for reinforcing ‘the predominant binary hierarchy’.Footnote ¹⁸ Furthermore, in attempting to bring about ‘the “geo-cultural” dream of “Global IR”’, different existing forms of writing and publishing IR have been delegitimised.Footnote ¹⁹ Consequently, anti-Eurocentric critical discourses reproduce the very Eurocentrism they seek to criticise, which is further enabled through ‘discriminative practices’ such as gatekeeping.Footnote ²⁰ Nevertheless, Global IR differs from other critiques because it provides practical steps to address Eurocentrism. For Acharya, creating a Global IR involves grounding IR ‘in world history, not just Greco-Roman, European, or US history’; integrating area studies; and recognising ‘multiple forms of agency beyond material power’.Footnote ²¹

Christopher Murray critiques Global IR for its failure to address IR’s Eurocentrism because it reproduces ‘a hierarchical imperial imaginary’ based on a ‘divided image of the world’ and ‘essentialised constructions of ethnic and cultural difference’ that are evident in the West/non-West categorisations.Footnote ²² Murray’s contention, therefore, is that if IR wishes to be global, it also needs to be post-imperial by using the label anti-colonial as opposed to non-Western. Drawing on Franz Fanon, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Edward Said, Murray argues that IR needs to highlight and engage with epistemic mapping.Footnote ²³ This is the process of claiming ‘ownership or close association between particular ways of thinking, seeing or knowing the world with particular imagined communities, or social identities and subjectivities’, which is then institutionalised. Epistemic mapping is also the process of assuming that ‘different ideas, practices or thought systems have a single geographical provenance’.Footnote ²⁴ Such epistemic mapping is the construction of Europe, or the West, in terms of ‘material success, scientific discovery, democracy and secular rationalism’,Footnote ²⁵ and as universalist; and ‘non-Westerners’ as ‘in need of intervention’.Footnote ²⁶ Furthermore, echoing earlier interventions highlighting the importance of history in IR and relational approaches,Footnote ²⁷ Murray argues that ‘representations of the Western and non-Western’ are ‘co-constituted, subject to social and political relations, which are multiaxial, and are strongly determined by historical development’.Footnote ²⁸

We find Pinar Bilgin’s interventions on the issue of West/non-West bifurcation to be particularly pertinent because of her approach to spatiality and epistemology. This approach suggests that the boundaries between the West and non-West are blurred. Bilgin encourages IR to examine the extent to which ‘Western’ IR is actually Western, and the extent to which ‘others’ are distinct from the ‘West’. This is because, ‘there may be elements of “non-Western” experiences and ideas built into those ostensibly “Western” approaches to the study of world politics’. Furthermore, what are considered to be non-Western ‘approaches to world politics may be suffused with “Western” concepts and theories’.Footnote ²⁹ In her endeavour to address the fluidity between the West and non-West, or ‘other’, Bilgin calls for a closer examination of how the ‘other’ constitutes the international. She asserts that historical, intellectual, and socio-political context is absolutely essential for a non-Eurocentric IR.Footnote ³⁰ Through engaging with and critiquing Barry Buzan and George Lawson’s The Global Transformation,Footnote ³¹ Bilgin examines how the ‘other’ constitutes the international with a close reading of Ottoman history. In so doing, she interrogates the Ottoman Empire’s relationship with ‘modernity’ from a 19th-century Ottoman perspective.Footnote ³²

Bilgin also addresses the agency of the ‘other’, or ‘periphery’. She contends that the so-called periphery is not simply a periphery, but rather a ‘constitutive outside’ whose ‘insights, interventions, experiences and inputs’ have not been acknowledged in the prevalent arena.Footnote ³³ Echoing Bilgin, the fluidity and complexity of such boundary making also has important corollaries for what Audrey Alejandro describes as ‘diversity management’ in the discipline of IR. Alejandro highlights how pervading Eurocentrism in IR means that Western scholars simultaneously keep IR’s ‘geo-cultural’ diversity at bay while also acting as the discipline’s ‘saviours’ in enabling ‘geo-cultural’ diversity to thrive. The impact of this is that they remain as the primary agents of IR diversity management.Footnote ³⁴

Murray’s call for an appreciation of epistemic mapping and assuming that ‘different ideas, practices or thought systems have a single geographical provenance’Footnote ³⁵ echoes Bilgin’s scholarship. However, our contention is that Murray’s call for post-imperial or anti-colonial in place of non-Western maintains similar boundaries to the West/non-West bifurcation. We accept Murray’s contention that representations of Western and non-Western are relational and co-constituted, and that the legacy of European imperial knowledge, or indeed as Robbie Shilliam puts it, ‘geo-cultural division of knowledge production’,Footnote ³⁶ needs to be highlighted. However, in framing ‘European colonialisms and their postcolonial manifestations as the catch-all variable that determine IR’s level of diversity’, there is a risk of further homogenising the discipline by only legitimising particular ways of diversifying IR.Footnote ³⁷ Furthermore, the notion of a post-imperial IR assumes, perhaps inadvertently, that all post-colonial societies have the same experience and dynamics, and that all non-Western societies have the same relationship with European colonialism. The idea of a post-imperial IR, therefore, creates new static boundaries, bifurcations, and binaries between ‘imperial’ and ‘post-imperial’. Subsequently, there is a danger of assuming that these are neat periods of history and that bodies of knowledge associated with them are devoid of influence from other parts of the world or indeed other periods in history.

Indeed, as John Hobson has illustrated, ‘the West and East have been consistently linked through globalization ever since 500 C.E.’, and the ideas of the European Enlightenment were built on Islamic thought and scientific developments.Footnote ³⁸ Furthermore, as Ali Ansari highlights, a ‘rediscovery’ of Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, in the late 18th and 19^th centuries by European intellectuals contributed to a critique of Christian orthodoxy and a means of encouraging secularism. In addition to this, ‘Western historians went in search of a “Persia” which was very much a part of their narrative of descent’ because the Persians had played a pivotal role ‘in the Biblical narrative’ and were considered ‘part of the Western foundational myth’; Ancient Iran, or Persia, would come to be seen as integral to the ‘West’ because of its relationship with the Bible.Footnote ³⁹ Regarding the complexity of colonialism, through a detailed analysis of India’s relationship with it, Ashis Nandy draws attention to the complexity of engaging or disengaging with colonialism.Footnote ⁴⁰ He demonstrates how the colonial experience does not necessarily create political culture and political projects that are based on rigid boundaries between the coloniser and colonised. Rather, there are projects that engage with colonialism critically towards an authentic post-colonial consciousness.Footnote ⁴¹ Furthermore, he contends that the impact of colonialism also influences the coloniser.Footnote ⁴² Thus, imperial and post-imperial are also co-constituted. What is associated with European imperialism, or ‘imperial’, is already diffused and complex. Furthermore, the post-colonial coloniser can also be suffused with ideas associated with the colonised.

Additionally, we need to be careful to not brush over legacies of knowledge that pre-date European colonialism and influences on European imperial knowledge, as this can also lead to assumptions and essentialisation. For instance, Iran’s case shows that what is considered West and non-West is fluid. How the West is understood in relation to Iran historically by Europeans is subject to a process of reconstruction. Furthermore, the legacy of Ancient Iran is integral to Khatami’s political thought, and ‘Western civilisation’ is seen as part of Iran’s political culture because of the legacy of colonialism. Indeed, just as Nandy argued that ‘India is not non-West; it is India’,Footnote ⁴³ Iran is not non-West, it is Iran.

While being cognisant of Murray’s concerns regarding the Global IR project and the risk of maintaining the West/non-West bifurcation, we argue that Acharya’s Global IR project remains a useful epistemological and ontological framework for addressing IR’s Eurocentricity because it has legitimised voices, actors, and histories on the periphery by acknowledging their relevance and highlighting their agency. After all it is not just the ‘West’ that acts, or indeed thinks. Focus on agency also legitimises the agency to engage with ideas regardless of their intellectual heritage. It is necessary to appreciate the agency of all to negotiate, reconstruct, and use bodies of knowledge regardless of whether at some point they have been, or are, considered Western or non-Western. Thus, the epistemology and ontology of Global IR allows for the inclusion of subject matter, approaches, and subjectivities that would have often previously been excluded because they are now considered legitimate. Indeed, it allows the ‘periphery’ to be recognised as a ‘constitutive outside’. Peter Katzenstein argues that IR is in ‘the midst of generating new knowledge and theories that all IR scholars will use to better understand a global world that resists understanding in terms of black and white distinctions’.Footnote ⁴⁴ By legitimising the inclusion of the ‘other’, Global IR has created space for IR to evolve without these rigid categories, while appreciating local contexts and specificities. Bearing in mind the ‘gatekeeping’ highlighted by Alejandro and Bilgin’s contention that the ‘periphery’ is yet to be considered as constitutive, there remains, however, a long way to go. Our approach to Dialogue among Civilisations contributes to showing how the ‘periphery’ or ‘other’ is in fact constitutive.

The issue of agency to engage with ideas is important. As scholars we need to be careful not to critique mid-20th century anti-colonial nationalists for essentially not being sufficiently anti-colonial because they use or reconstruct categories or values that have been associated with European imperial knowledge. For instance, Murray notes Fanon’s communication with the Iranian intellectual, Ali Shariati.Footnote ⁴⁵ While there may be disagreement about approaches relating to how to deal with colonialism, as scholars in the 21st century we should also be careful not to presume that Shariati’s ideas were not sufficiently anti-colonial because of his use of the non-West/West binary and aspirations for a post-colonial Iran based on a combination of Marxism and Islam. Rather, it is essential to embrace and be open to the agency of all, whether that is the post-colonial subject, the periphery, or the ‘other’, to engage with ideas, regardless of the genealogy, and ‘reconstitute the international’.Footnote ⁴⁶ The agency to engage in intellectual critique by any subject, post-colonial or not, must be accepted. To disregard this agency is also Orientalism.

Legitimising the inclusion in IR of those on the periphery is especially pertinent in the context of actors that are often represented and discursively constructed as the ‘other’ in global politics and academia. Representation of actors and subjects is ‘an inherent and important aspect of global political life’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Consequently, this discursive articulation produces knowledge that is subsequently presented as truth. This ‘truth’ then makes ‘various courses of action possible’.Footnote ⁴⁸ An actor that has been systematically constructed as the ‘other’ is Iran. The epistemic mapping that Murray and others identify is particularly evident in US foreign policy and scholarship towards Iran.

Although the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations have a more nuanced approach, the ‘rogue state’, ‘axis of evil’, and ‘rogue regime’ labels employed by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, respectively, show that Iran is viewed simply in terms of a ‘threat’ or enemy because it is considered ‘irrational’ and therefore in need of intervention.Footnote ⁴⁹ Additionally, by condemning an actor as ‘evil’, it is presented as something that ‘can neither be fully comprehended nor addressed other than through militaristic forms of dissuasion and retaliation’.Footnote ⁵⁰ Such a dogmatic and static approach is particularly evident in some US scholarship. Despite the Islamic Republic of Iran’s moves towards more pragmatic and moderate foreign policy during the 1990s, scholarship tended to focus on Iran’s military capability, offering prescriptions to policymakers on how to ‘deal’ with Iran, sailing close to the rhetoric of US neo-conservatism and the ‘rogue state’ paradigm.Footnote ⁵¹

The implication of such policies and scholarship, however, is that ‘Iran is always the rogue, static “other” that is fundamentally different to the forever benign, yet (paradoxically) fluid “self” in the context of both IR and foreign policy’.Footnote ⁵² Notably, this dichotomising narrative of Iran and the West builds on long-standing Orientalism. The othering of Iran or Persia in some Ancient Greek texts is well documented.Footnote ⁵³ Furthermore, certain events, such as the military conflict between the Ancient Greeks and the Persians between 490 and 479 BCE, have been repeatedly interpreted as the ‘triumph of western ideals of freedom and self-determination over slavish submission to repressive forces of oriental despotism’.Footnote ⁵⁴ At the turn of the 17th century, European travellers and merchants associated ‘Persians’ with ‘despotism’ and ‘decadence’ and no longer the ‘noble Persians’ of Herodotus.Footnote ⁵⁵ In the 18th century, Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes was based on an imagined figuration of the Orient as exotic and despotic while also critiquing French society.Footnote ⁵⁶ By the 19th century, ‘Persia’ was imagined as being prone to ‘corruption’ and political ‘decay’.Footnote ⁵⁷

Significantly, however, some recent IR scholarship has had a more nuanced approach to Iran’s international relations and worldview. This includes the Iran–Saudi Arabia relationship,Footnote ⁵⁸ its soft power projection,Footnote ⁵⁹ studies exploring the salience of identity,Footnote ⁶⁰ and wider transnational linkages in terms of identity and religious networks.Footnote ⁶¹ The ‘rogue state’ approach has also come under criticism for its demonising tendencies.Footnote ⁶² In political theory, anti-colonial political thinkers such as Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Shariati, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini have been revisited in light of developments in post-colonial theory.Footnote ⁶³ Such scholarship is due in part to the ‘global turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, which builds on the growing critiques regarding Eurocentrism of the early 2000s. Indeed, Global IR has enhanced visibility of critical theories, ‘including decolonial and postcolonial theories, and the sociology of knowledge’, allowing for ‘fuller representations of the “global”’.Footnote ⁶⁴

Building on this more nuanced IR scholarship, there is also a need for a non-Eurocentric relational approach to Khatami and the Dialogue among Civilisations. Our contention, therefore, is that in order to move away from IR’s Eurocentrism towards a more global and inclusive IR, there is a need for an approach that simultaneously addresses several issues. First, a historical and relational approach that appreciates socio-political and intellectual context is essential. Second, the legacy of European imperial knowledge and how it is used must be appreciated alongside multiple intellectual heritages. Third, it is crucial to appreciate of the agency of subjects and agents to construct the international and engage with bodies of knowledge as they wish. With this in mind, our contention is that an in-depth understanding of Iran alongside a revisiting of Khatami’s Dialogue among Civilisations can act as a means of bringing the perspective of the ‘other’ into debates on the international and our epistemological and ontological understanding of the West. Dialogue among Civilisations is better understood through a simultaneous appreciation of Iran’s political cultures and intellectual heritages. Furthermore, we contend that our approach to Dialogue among Civilisations is all the more pertinent in light of how Iran is constructed in a discipline that claims to examine the world. This highlights a complex set of dynamics that should be considered in our understanding of the international.

Blurred borders: Iran’s multiple heritages as context

Khatami’s intellectual and political thought is grounded in a number of debates regarding Iran’s political, social, and economic transformation. These include (1) the late 19th century and subsequent Constitutional Revolution (1906–11); (2) the 1950s leading up to the 1979 Revolution; and (3) the post-revolutionary intellectual movement Reformism, or Reform movement, in the late 1980s and 1990s, which sought to bring together democracy and Islam in the context of the Islamic Republic. Its origins are attributed to vigorous debates regarding the nature of the Islamic Republic following the end of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–8).Footnote ⁶⁵

The impact of Western culture and civilization, Iran’s Islamic and pre-Islamic heritages, and how intellectuals have engaged with these influences have influenced debates regarding Iran’s political, economic, and social development.Footnote ⁶⁶ Furthermore, Khatami’s personal intellectual endeavours demonstrate a critical engagement with not only Islamic philosophy, including the religio-political basis of the Islamic Republic of Iran, velāyat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist), but also Western political thought that demonstrates a process of taking, reconstructing, and renegotiating ideas. Thus, Iranian intellectual history needs to be seen in terms of negotiation, hybridity, and fluidity.Footnote ⁶⁷ As noted, such an approach is itself integral to the idea of Dialogue among Civilisations.

Dialogue among Civilisations explicitly relates to a long-standing intellectual and political debate in Iran about what is considered Iran’s authentic heritage. This is a negotiation and engagement with Irāniyat (Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage, or ancient Persian civilisation),Footnote ⁶⁸ Islāmiyat (Islam and Islamic heritage and civilisation), and Western civilisation. The approach is drawn specifically from the Reformist intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush and his belief that Iran has three ‘components’ or ‘cultures’: Iranian, Islamic, and Western.Footnote ⁶⁹ In the context of IR, Dialogue among Civilisations is largely seen in terms of a dialogue between East and West, or in terms of a framework for a global, pluralist, and just construction of world order following the end of the Cold War.Footnote ⁷⁰ However, it also needs to be seen in terms of a longer historical trajectory and of the complexity of an epistemology that questions our ontological understanding of the West.

The significance of Irāniyat is that it relates to Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage. With the archaeological rediscovery of Iran’s ancient heritage during the 19th century, Irāniyat came to play an important role among intellectuals, such as Mirza Fathali Akhundzadeh (1812–78), Mirza Agha Khan Kermani (1853–96), and later Hassan Taqizadeh (1878–1970).Footnote ⁷¹ Irāniyat was used alongside a critical engagement with Western modernity and Western political thought to address increasing Russian and British influence on Iran.Footnote ⁷² An explicit engagement with Irāniyat alongside Western civilisation would also come to be important aspects of Iranian politics through the approach to nationalism of Iran’s monarchs Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1925-1941) and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941-1979).Footnote ⁷³ After the 1979 Revolution, which deposed the Pahlavis, and the subsequent establishment of the Islamic Republic, there was a renewed political engagement with Irāniyat, particularly among Reformists. In this environment, Irāniyat gained considerable significance as an integral part of Dialogue among Civilisations.

The blurring of West and non-West is also evident in the relationship with Marxism in Iranian politics. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed a strong anti-colonial intellectual trend that saw a blending of leftist and Marxist political thought, associated with the West, and Islam. This was in the context of increasing external influence on Iran’s affairs and Mohammad Reza Shah’s authoritarianism. For instance, Siavash Saffari highlights how Shariati sought to ‘advance a socio-politically progressive discourse of indigenous modernity that engages freely with a wide range of emancipatory projects in the modern world’.Footnote ⁷⁴ In a similar vein, Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi has offered a compelling rereading of Al-e Ahmad that goes beyond the ‘nativist’ renditions, showing that he ‘shares a series of common preoccupations with more familiar anti-colonial thinkers’.Footnote ⁷⁵

Also building on these multiple heritages, Khomeini ‘combined and infused traditional Islamic discourse with “modern” Western ideas and concepts’Footnote ⁷⁶ to articulate a ‘religious nationalism’Footnote ⁷⁷ and the idea of an Islamic Republic. Khomeini’s treatise ‘Islamic Government’, published in 1970, introduced the idea of velāyat-e faqih, which envisioned the establishment of clerical rule in Iran in place of the monarchy. Khomeini, as one of the highest-ranking clerics, argued that the highest-ranking Islamic jurist (faqih) should be the ruler, and that accepting the rule of their religious guardians in the form of the ulema was a religious duty. In ‘Islamic Government’, Khomeini sought to further increase the status of the ulema and promote the idea of the faqih as a legitimate sovereign. This work was also key in propagating the idea of a revolution against the Pahlavi regime.

Therefore, despite the appearance of velāyat-e faqih as a concept based on ideas of Islamic jurisprudence, one needs to be aware that Khomeini’s ‘Islamic Government’ also contains much in the way of direct appeals to ‘the Iranian people’, and its political message was crafted accordingly. The populist egalitarianism that drew on the political thought of modern Iranian political thinkers, including Shariati, allowed space for a plethora of non-religious political activists and thinkers to become involved in the revolutionary project. Thus, on assuming power, Khomeini’s desires for the new Iranian state were shaped by this wider coalition of secular and religious nationalists, leftists including Marxists, and others, which resulted in the establishment of the Islamic Republic. This was therefore a state project not only founded on a unique, and arguably modernist, take on political Shi’ism, but also a republic that drew on a long-standing Iranian intellectual engagement with Western ideas of democracy and democratic institutions, and the anti-imperialism of Marxist factions. The very foundation of a state that combined elements of traditional and modern Islamic theories of government, along with what would be deemed more ‘recognisable’ (in the West) as democratic and institutional features, subsequently provided space for a later wave of Reformist thinkers to develop political thought that drew on this multifaceted heritage. Though Khatami’s scholarly work draws on modernist Shi’i thinkers, discussed below, and he has lauded the influence of late 19th-/early 20th-century constitutionalist thinkers such as Ayatollah Mirza Hossein Na’ini,Footnote ⁷⁸ he remains very much a man of the Islamic Republic, with his political ideas articulated within this unique political climate. His political thought was distinct from such thinkers due to its attempts to enhance civil society in the context of the Islamic Republic, which also continues to set him in marked contrast to more conservative elements of the Iranian polity, such as those around the Supreme Leader, who emphasise religious over popular sovereignty in Iranian politics.

Khatami and the Dialogue among Civilisations

Not only was Khatami socialised in a rich intellectual environment based on multiple interconnected heritages, he also explicitly engaged with multiple bodies of knowledge regardless of their provenance. Raised in a clerical family, Khatami’s religious studies began in 1961, when he began attending the Qom seminary at which he studied until 1965. It was here that he became a follower of Khomeini, and after his move to Isfahan to study Philosophy in 1965, the young Khatami became more involved in Islamic politics, beginning with his activities in the Association of Muslim Students at the university where he worked closely with Khomeini’s son Ahmad, among others. Having obtained his BA in Philosophy, Khatami began postgraduate studies at the University of Tehran in 1969 before returning to Qom two years later to further study Islamic law, jurisprudence, and philosophy. While in Qom, Khatami and other former students of Khomeini formed Jāme’eh-ye rowhāniyat-e mobārez (The Society of Combatant Clerics), a group that played a key role in mobilising opposition to Mohammad Reza Shah, and went on to constitute the main clerical body of the Islamic Republican Party following the revolution.Footnote ⁷⁹ In 1978, just prior to the revolution, Khatami was chosen to head the Hamburg Islamic Institute in West Germany, at the time a hub of opposition to the Pahlavi monarchy, which played a key role in organising revolutionary activity among the Iranian diaspora.

Prior to becoming president, Khatami held a number of roles. In his role as Minister for Culture and Islamic Guidance under former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, he had been responsible for facilitating limited openings in the cultural and social sphere. Khatami was forced to tender his resignation in 1992 following criticism of his liberalising tendencies by conservatives in the Islamic Republic establishment. Following this, he took up a post as head of Iran’s National Library. While in this role he published two notable works on Islamic and Western philosophy. They shine a light on the antecedents of his own political thought and later found a more applied articulation within Dialogue among Civilisations. In Bim-e mowj (Fear of the Wave) of 1372/1993,Footnote ⁸⁰ Khatami pays particular attention to Shi’i thinkers, including Baqir al-Sadr, Morteza Motahhari, and Allameh Tabataba’i, who sought to reconcile Islam with modernity.Footnote ⁸¹ Within this work, Khatami offers implied criticisms of the revolutionary project in Iran, emphasising the necessity of greater social and individual freedoms for Iran’s development. Khatami’s Az donyā-ye shahr tā shahr-e donyā: sayri dar andisheh-ye siyāsi-ye gharb (From the World of the City to the City of the World: A Survey of Western Political Thought) is something of a review of liberal political philosophy, focusing particularly on the work of John Locke.Footnote ⁸² Khatami emphasised that Locke, and other liberal thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, represented dynamic forces questioning the problems of their time, and in doing so implied that his own political philosophy (and ultimately desire for reform in Iran) drew on a similar critical bent.Footnote ⁸³

However, his work in the field and his own socially liberal inclinations do not necessarily indicate acquiescence to liberal precepts and adherence to wider liberal philosophy. Khatami was well versed in liberal political philosophy but was often quite critical of it, using it as a counterfoil for his own conceptions of how Iran should progress. In a similar manner, the familiarity of Khatami and his advisers with the work of more modern Western scholarship in the fields of philosophy and political theory, such as that of Jürgen Habermas and the wider Frankfurt School, was useful in a critical sense. This was because it provided Khatami and other religious intellectuals working within the system an intellectual platform from which to critique the West,Footnote ⁸⁴ and one that was distinct from the more conservative imaginations of political development in the Islamic Republic.

Khatami’s understanding of Western political philosophy played a significant role in his own development of Dialogue among Civilisations. It is also very much a product of its time, in terms of debates about world order and the future of the post–Cold War world, including the Clash of Civilisations, but with a marked antithetical bent. Thus, while plurality for Huntington has negative ramifications for the hegemony of the West, for Khatami it exists as a positive force. There is also a clear contradistinction between the ‘politicisation’ of civilisational reference points found in Huntington’s formulation that led to ‘rivalry’ and Khatami’s conceptualisation, which instead emphasises the ‘socialisation’ of civilisation through a peaceful and cooperative political culture that facilitates dialogue.Footnote ⁸⁵

As noted, Khatami’s first major international presentation of the Dialogue among Civilisations was significant because it came during Iran’s hosting of the OIC’s summit. Khatami utilised this major international event, one that in itself was indication of Tehran’s ongoing ‘rehabilitation’ on the world stage and the first of its kind to take place in Iran, to place his calls for dialogue in the context of an Islamic conception of civil society. This conception was mindful of the achievements of Western civilisation but drew on its own history for inspiration. Khatami emphasised acceptance and understanding of other cultures, which he cast in opposition to regression and withdrawal. He stated:

The Persian-language term usually employed by Khatami for dialogue, goftegu, is a direct translation and also a synonym for debate or conversation. One of Iran’s best-known journals carries the same name, publishing on Iranian culture, history, and society since 1972. Though the Persian etymological roots of the term do not correspond precisely to the Greek origin found in English, its meaning is the same in terms of its antonymic relation to monologue. Importantly for its use in this context, Moshirzadeh notes that ‘what differentiates dialogue from monologue is that a monologue represents the reflexive absence of an other’.Footnote ⁸⁷ This remains fundamental for how the concept was applied both practically and philosophically.

Notably, however, the notion of Dialogue among Civilisations did not start with Khatami. The desire to place Iran at the centre of global conversations that draw on civilisational reference points has a deeper genealogy, both in terms of the history of Iran’s broader foreign relations and within its own intellectual history and debates around its encounter with modernity. Regarding the former, one can observe efforts to acknowledge Iran’s status as a great civilisation in its attempted representations to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.Footnote ⁸⁸ Here, Iran presented its wishes to be included not only on the basis of its historical contribution to world civilisation, but also in a way that was cognisant of not merely aping European civilisation on the quest towards ‘modernity’, and which maintained its then-precarious sovereignty.Footnote ⁸⁹ Later in the 20th century, Mohammad Reza Shah sought to harness Iran’s civilisational grandeur both in a performative sense of harking back to the great days of Persian power in the ancient world, and also through a sense of ‘civilisational developmentalism’ that was destined to put Iran on the path back towards greatness.Footnote ⁹⁰

The term Dialogue among Civilisations, though presented by Khatami largely as a response to Huntington, pre-dates any notion of the Clash of Civilisations and indeed Khatami’s political career in the Islamic Republic. The noted Iranian philosopher Daryush Shayegan had previously organised a symposium on Dialogue among Civilisations in 1977, during his time in charge of the Iranian Centre for the Study of Civilization (1976–9).Footnote ⁹¹ Like Khatami, Shayegan’s interest in civilisational and cultural encounters are rooted in debates about the impact of modernity on the Islamic world, with both adopting a similar stance in terms of cautioning against regression and withdrawal from such an encounter.Footnote ⁹² However, while there are some similarities in terms of their civilisational reference points, they differ, with Khatami’s framing drawing on more explicit Islamic reference points and modernist Shi’i thinkers.Footnote ⁹³ However, Shayegan often takes aim at the clerical elite in post-revolutionary Iran.Footnote ⁹⁴ Though Khatami has also critiqued Iran’s political (and by extension, clerical) elite, his position within the system means that he has to make more use inference and subtle framings, such as lambasting traditionalists and authoritarian tendencies within the Islamic Republic.Footnote ⁹⁵

A key contributor to the intellectual development of Dialogue among Civilisations was Khatami’s close adviser and academic, Hadi Khaniki. In terms of assessing the concept’s utility as a potential framework for international order, Khaniki highlights the necessity of understanding how Dialogue among Civilisations relates to liberal and communitarian approaches.Footnote ⁹⁶ For Khaniki, and indeed Khatami, the liberalism of Hobbes and Locke is seen as too interest-oriented and individualistic. Seeing the group, rather than the individual, as the primary social unit facilitates a hermeneutic dialogue between cultural and social networks and horizons.Footnote ⁹⁷ Some scholars have cited the closeness of Habermas’s ideas on communicative action to those of Khatami’s calls for dialogue,Footnote ⁹⁸ with Khaniki himself noting the potential validity of synthesising both approaches.Footnote ⁹⁹ For Moshirzadeh, the Dialogue among Civilisations represents a public debate at the international level, which presupposes an embryonic form of public sphere in which dialogue can be shaped.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ However, the link should not be overstated, and the citing of Habermas in this context only goes so far, often ignoring the potential for ‘aggressive cosmopolitanism’ highlighted by Jennifer Mitzen.Footnote ¹⁰¹ For Khaniki, Habermas’s argument is still based on the independent, self-sufficient individual, whereas for himself and Khatami the outward aim is towards using more communitarian-informed principles to establish an ethical system at the international level.Footnote ¹⁰² Moshirzadeh highlights a further difference in terms of Habermas’s insistence on the necessity of a shared modern lifeworld for conducting dialogues, whereas Khatami sees the capacity in all civilisations to find dialogues as a way to reach truth.Footnote ¹⁰³

Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, Alisdair MacIntyre, and others, the concept’s philosophical roots are embedded in notions of ‘otherness’ and ‘looking from without’, insofar as understanding of the ‘self’ or identity is only possible with the presence of an ‘other’. The thoughts of Khaniki come close to Xavier Guillaume’s conceptualisation of the ‘hermeneutical locus’ when discussing the role of dialogue and identity in IR.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ This involves the ‘interweaving in a specific place (the utterance) of an identity’s expression, its contextuality and its relations to other identities (other utterances)’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Like Khaniki, Guillaume adopts a Bakhtinian notion of ‘self’ and ‘other’ through a dialogism defined by such interweaving as opposed to monologism.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In Khatami’s formulation, this manifests itself in a critical reflection on ‘self’ and ‘other’ and, through this reflection, poses critical questions about the relationship between tradition and modernity, summarised in the following:

Khaniki sees the issues embedded in Dialogue among Civilisations as ‘amenable’ to being placed in communitarian contexts, arguing how at the international level, communitarian principles are aimed at setting a ‘global consensus’ as a starting point for establishing an ‘ethical system’.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Indeed, Fabio Petito presents Dialogue among Civilisations as a form of international theory in its own right,Footnote ¹⁰⁹ which comes close to Khatami’s own wishes for the concept being able to be used to forge ‘a new paradigm in international relations’.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Petito views the concept as a ‘global political discourse’ formed in response to the post–Cold War arguments of Fukayama’s End of History and Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’. He is against what he claims to be the widespread misperception of Dialogue among Civilisations as a ‘rhetorical escamotage used for strategic reasons.’ Rather, Petito sees the concept as ‘a genuine vision on how to construct a more peaceful and just world order after the end of the Cold War.’Footnote ¹¹¹

However, in addition to this approach on world order and Iranian foreign policy, the development of Dialogue among Civilisations needs to be simultaneously understood in the context of intellectual debates regarding the nature of the Islamic Republic as a domestic project. This can in part be seen in terms of the implementation of Khomeini’s velāyat-e faqih with the establishment of the Islamic Republic and the subsequent Reform Movement. Reformists argued for Islamic democracy, adherence to the constitution, civil rights and importance of civil society, and the rule of law.Footnote ¹¹² This coincided with Iran’s post-revolutionary experience entering something of a ‘thermidor’ phase, with figures such as Khatami challenging orthodoxy of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary political thought and vying to return to the ideals of the 1979 Revolution.

Thus, Dialogue among Civilisations was typical of the climate in Iranian intellectual circles during this period, and that which Khatami sought to foster as Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Indeed, Khatami’s primary presidential election strategist in 1997 was Saeed Hajjarian, a Reformist who sought to assert political legitimacy over religious rule through Islamic democracy. Khatami’s harnessing of Reformism along with the backing of Rafsanjani’s political faction helped Khatami to secure such a large electoral victory, which shook the conservative establishment. Significantly, as president, Khatami established Reformism as an official political discourse. Domestically, this allowed for and legitimised a relative liberalisation of the political environment. This was evident in the growth of civil society through the proliferation of non-government organisations and media. This civil society space highlighted debates regarding women in the context of the Islamic Republic through publications such as Zanān Magazine and Farzāneh Women’s Studies Journal. It also allowed dialogue with the outside world through the arts, among other activities, as was evident in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Museum of Art’s activities.Footnote ¹¹³

Khatami was able to use his position to disseminate Dialogue among Civilisations internationally. This positioning of Dialogue among Civilisations arguably represented something of a publicity coup for the Islamic Republic on the world stage.Footnote ¹¹⁴ In practical terms, Khatami’s 1998 CNN interview addressing the ‘American people’ was a significant example of Dialogue among Civilisations referring to ‘American civilisation’ and the need for a dialogue between Iran and ‘Western civilisation’.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Furthermore, that it provoked serious academic and policy debate, particularly during Khatami’s first term, is testament to the utility of a concept that had both a deeper philosophical argument and also a practical application and intent in Iranian foreign policy. However, as a former minister of Khatami’s and former head of the Tehran-based Centre for Dialogue among Civilisations, Ata’ollah Mohajerani, noted, within Iran the concept was negatively impacted by political divisions between reformist and conservative factions which hampered its reception.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Furthermore, ultimately it is the Supreme Leader that has overall control over Iran’s relations and security.

In Iran, there has been an uneasy path regarding the continued saliency of Dialogue among Civilisations. By the end of Khatami’s presidency, popularity dwindled with many Iranians feeling betrayed. The year 2005 saw a marked change in Iran’s foreign policy with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the reversal of many of Khatami’s initiatives and aspirations. In the context of the 2009/10 popular uprising following the controversial re-election of Ahmadinejad, however, Reformism played an important role in the Green Movement’s ideas but was vehemently rejected by many protestors.Footnote ¹¹⁷ In 2013, Dialogue among Civilisations once again became prevalent with Hassan Rouhani’s presidency. A clear lineage from Khatami to Rouhani was evident in the similarities of their approaches to Iranian foreign policy and Khatami’s support for Rouhani. Khatami lauded Rouhani’s ‘platform of prudence and hope as a practical translation of the idea of dialogue among nations as to the realm of politics’.Footnote ¹¹⁸ In practical terms, Rouhani drew on Khatami’s approach in utilising the UN to articulate his concept of a ‘World against Violence and Extremism’, citing the need for an international ‘coalition for enduring peace’.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Later, he emphasised constructive dialogue with all nations.Footnote ¹²⁰ This included using the UN to announce the ‘Coalition for HOPE’ (or Hormuz Peace Endeavour) as a means of addressing Persian Gulf security.Footnote ¹²¹ On a domestic level, however, Rouhani’s presidency, and the subsequent Ebrahim Raisi administration, also witnessed increasing dissatisfaction, with several periods of protests in response to the impact of climate change and mismanagement, the economic situation exacerbated by corruption and the reimposition of sanctions, and compulsory hejab among other issues. In September 2022, the killing of the Kurdish Iranian woman Jina Mahsa Amini while in custody over what the Islamic Republic considers improper hejab sparked a new wave of widespread protests. Significantly, these protests demonstrated an absolute rejection of the idea of Islamic Republic, and Reformism as part of that, calling for a new revolution, while reformist figures, Khatami included, sought to find a middle path between the government and protesters.Footnote ¹²²

On a global level, however, the idea of Dialogue among Civilisations continued to find an application under the auspices of the UN-based ‘Alliance of Civilisations’. The formation was co-sponsored by Spanish and Turkish prime ministers at the time, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A high-level group was formed by then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan involving Khatami, Desmond Tutu, and others to continue efforts at preventing the Clash of Civilisations. While we do not have space in this article to expound on this further, there have been a great number of works cited in this paper and beyond on Dialogue among Civilisations since 2005, further evidencing the continuing salience of the concept to debates in IR.

Dialogue among Civilisations: Beyond the West/non-West bifurcation

The very notion of Dialogue among Civilisations provides an epistemological and ontological challenge to the West/non-West dichotomisation. This is because the concept is based on taking and adapting ideas from multiple epistemes to create not only an international political project, speaking to issues such as world order, but also a domestic one that is interconnected with the international. Furthermore, it demonstrates an acute understanding that Iran’s political culture simultaneously draws on multiple heritages. Thus, dialogue and fluidity, rather than dichotomisation and bifurcation, are at the heart of the concept.

An appreciation of this requires an understanding of both how Khatami defines civilisation, culture, tradition, and modernity, all of which are considered as ‘human constructs’ and ambiguous terms,Footnote ¹²³ and his approach to Iran’s intellectual and historical heritages. At the heart of Khatami’s aspirations for Iran is a fluid approach to civilisation and tradition and how society should deal with these dynamics.Footnote ¹²⁴ While culture is defined as ‘the collection of rooted beliefs’ and ‘as habits of thought and emotion in society’,Footnote ¹²⁵ civilisation is ‘the material aspects of social life and all institutions and organization that acts as political, economic, industrial and other frameworks for social organization’.Footnote ¹²⁶ Regarding the relationship between the two, ‘civilization is the basis and foundation of a culture’;Footnote ¹²⁷ and ‘tradition comprises the habituated thoughts, beliefs, and deeds of a people, that have been institutionalized in society based on past practices’.Footnote ¹²⁸ ‘Tradition’, therefore, is ‘the existing culture in a society that has once possessed a compatible civilization’.Footnote ¹²⁹

How Khatami sees civilisation, culture, tradition, and modernity interacting with each other demonstrates inherent fluidity. He has a willingness to engage with not only the past, but also with norms and values that he views as being from another civilisation. In terms of the former, Khatami states that ‘a culture that is adapted to a civilization can endure in people’s lives long after the demise of that civilization’.Footnote ¹³⁰ In other words, tradition can remain a part of a society’s culture even if its former civilisation is no longer dominant or present. Consequently, society needs to bring together the positive aspects of both ‘tradition’ and/or the previous civilisation(s) and another civilisation, and even embark on creating a new relevant civilisation.Footnote ¹³¹ Thus, Dialogue among Civilisations is a framework for dealing with a society’s or state’s social and political change, which draws on previous and new civilisations while maintaining authenticity and legitimacy. In Iran’s particular case, this means a dialogue with Irāniyat (previous) and Western civilisation (new).

Crucially, Khatami’s approach shows how Western civilisation is simultaneously seen as not only in terms of the historical and the contemporary, but as internal and external to Iran. For Khatami, ‘modern Western civilization’ is not to be confused with ‘Christian civilization of the Middle Ages’. While the former is associated with the Enlightenment and nature and humans being central to the modern world, the latter is seen in terms of ‘God and religion’.Footnote ¹³² Certainly, this demonstrates the legacy of European imperial knowledge. Importantly, however, Khatami is intent on showing appreciation of what he considers the ‘achievements of Western civilization’, namely ‘modern science, technology, freedom of thought, and democracy’. Khatami is also keen to highlight ‘the colonialism of Western civilization’, which involves ‘the use of deadly force against non-Westerners, the plunder of other peoples’ material and cultural riches, polluting the earth’s environment, perpetuating half-truths and lies, and the opportunism that also characterize the West’.Footnote ¹³³ For Khatami, this is both historically and in the present.

Western civilisation is external in that Khatami sees it as the culture and civilisation that dominates the globe. For instance, Khatami states that ‘today’s world is Western in its orientation, techniques, and thoughts such that even if one lives outside the geographic boundaries of the West, one must incorporate the West into one’s values and life’.Footnote ¹³⁴ However, Western civilisation is simultaneously internal because of its colonial legacy. This is evident in his reflection on Iran’s political history. Here, Khatami equates domestic dictatorship and authoritarianism (the Pahlavi political order) with the West (colonial power). Khatami argues that during the past 200 years Iran encountered ‘authoritarianism and dictatorship of a more dangerous and destructive character that took over our society’Footnote ¹³⁵ through widespread colonialism. This, according to Khatami, afflicted Iran ‘with a colonialism-dependent dictatorship’ that ‘was dependent on protecting the interests of a global colonist’ by means of robbing Iran’s ‘material and spiritual resources’. Thus, it is also authoritarianism, rather than just democracy, that is associated with the West.

For Khatami, the dilemma, therefore, that post-colonial Muslim societies face is how to engage with the colonial power while maintaining a post-colonial authenticity. His discussion highlights how Western civilisation is integral to post-colonial politics. Khatami critiques two extant approaches. On the one hand, there are ‘traditionalists’ who have not been able to provide ‘society with tools to appraise Western civilization properly’.Footnote ¹³⁶ On the other, there are those who have a ‘complete and uncritical adopting of modern values’. This approach is considered a failure because it is unable to reach out to ‘people who have become habituated to tradition’.Footnote ¹³⁷ Nor has it been able to disentangle itself from autocracy and being the ‘the tools of Western colonialism’.Footnote ¹³⁸ Thus, Khatami argues that Iran must decide where to ‘stand in relation to the West’ while maintaining Iran’s national identity.Footnote ¹³⁹

His response to this post-colonial condition, particularly in Muslim societies, is a third approach, namely Reformism, or ‘real Islam’.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ For Khatami, Islam of ‘reform-minded thinkers in the developing world’ is the ‘real Islam, as opposed to the ‘regressive’ Islam of the traditionalists and ‘dogmatic clerics’, or a ‘diluted Islam’ that does not have ‘real knowledge of Islam’.Footnote ¹⁴¹ ‘Diluted Islam’ opens Iran to the greatest risk of the ‘West’s cultural onslaught’. Reformism, however, involves a dialogue between both tradition and modernity; and between civilisation of the past and that of the present (Western civilisation), which is seen to dominate the world.Footnote ¹⁴² Thus, Reformism is itself a dialogue of civilisations. Its authenticity is preserved because it involves ‘a return to the self and reviving our historical-cultural identity’ and ‘a positive encounter with the achievements of human civilization, while being aware of the hegemonic and colonial legacy of the West’.Footnote ¹⁴³

As noted, integral to Khatami’s Reformism is the idea of Islamic democracy as a dialogue between Islamic civilisation and Western civilisation. Khatami’s Islamic democracy drew on Soroush and other religious intellectuals such as Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari and Mohsen Kadivar. This political thought involved their questioning of the ‘political Islam project’ and debates on the ‘sovereignty of religious values by means of the sovereignty of the people (religious democratic government)’; the ‘separation of religion from government (liberalism and secularism)’;Footnote ¹⁴⁴ and ‘the role of power sharing, independent grassroots associations, political parties, the rule of law, and individual rights and freedom’ as supporters of civil society.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Eshkevari argued that ‘not only are Islam and democracy in the realm of state and government not incompatible, but, on the contrary, Muslim government cannot be undemocratic’.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Thus, Dialogue among Civilisations is acknowledging the way in which Western civilisation is integral to Iranian political culture because of the legacy of colonialism and embracing what are considered the positive aspects of Western civilisation, such as democracy.

In addition to debates regarding Western civilisation, there is also an affirmation that both Irāniyat and Islāmiyat are integral to Iranian political culture. This is evident in his construction of Iranian national identity.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ He argues that ‘there is still this wrong image that we have to split being Iranian from being Islamic’.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ To this end, Khatami states:

This extract is taken from a speech to inaugurate an Iranian television network, seven months after his election. It is a clear demonstration of the contention, illustrated above, that a culture can remain even if the time of the civilisation, such as Iran’s pre-Islamic civilisation, has passed. Notably, this dialogue between Irāniyat and Islāmiyat played a significant role in building bridges with Iran’s youth and diaspora.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ It is evident, therefore, that Dialogue among Civilisations is not simply associated with world order. It is also about creating an authentic post-colonial political project that has to engage with Irāniyat, Islāmiyat, and Western civilisation. For Khatami, this not only enables Iran’s engagement with the world, but also a domestic political project that in his mind has legitimacy.