Over decades authoritarian regimes can convert episodic repression into a durable capability by professionalizing security services, embedding them across bureaucracy and economy, and developing anticipatory surveillance and preemptive repression tactics. This institutional learning raises the bar for protest movements by neutralizing coordination, surveilling networks, and selectively co‑opting rivals.
— If true, the idea reframes foreign policy and human‑rights strategy: change cannot be assumed from mass protest alone and must reckon with regime enforcement capacity, organizational adaptation, and the limits of sanctions or external pressure.
Saeid Golkar
2026.01.14
92% relevant
The article’s core claim — that Iran has institutionalized a cohesive, ideologically vetted coercive apparatus (IRGC, Basij, intelligence services) whose redundancy and social embedding block the kinds of defections that toppled the Shah — maps directly onto the existing idea that modern security‑state learning and institutional entrenchment prevent revolutions. Golkar names the same actors and mechanisms (ideological vetting, patronage, generational loyalty) that the idea highlights.
Yascha Mounk
2026.01.10
88% relevant
The interview centers on the Revolutionary Guard and regime resilience; this maps onto the preexisting argument that entrenched security apparatuses and institutional learning can blunt or absorb uprisings, making elite cohesion the key variable for whether protests succeed.
Saeid Golkar
2026.01.02
100% relevant
The article cites Iran’s IRGC, Basij, Ministry of Intelligence, cyber monitoring, and low‑ranking security offices as the concrete mechanisms through which the regime institutionalized repression and anticipatory control.