Drugs and Revolution: Policymaking, Ideology and the Margins of Civil Society in Iran. (360G-Wellcome-101988_Z_13_Z)

The research will encompass the framework of relations among political and social actors with regard to drugs and drug policies, paying attention to the public as well as the private and NGO sectors. It will attempt to describe and define the rationale behind the expansion of civil society organisations working on drug control programmes, in view also of the existing restrictions in other fields not related to drugs. As a result the research could cast light on why the topic of drugs has been pe rceived as less problematic by Iranian law-makers and how the state has agreed to concede considerable leeway of manoeuvre to non-state actors in this field. The hypothesis is that the threat of drugs has brought Iranian policymakers to reconsider the margins of acceptability for civil society organisations and consequently other actors in the public sphere. The state has reformulated the practice of intervention vis vis drugs, while at the same time retaining the monopoly of legitimate coerc ion through Law Enforcement Agencies and the discourse of the War on Drugs. Moreover, by virtue of the direct support to NGOs, the state succeeded in co-opting and neutralising their political leverage, de facto outsourcing treatment services.