i posted this several times before but it wont post....so i hope it does this time...this is from Thursday last week
Judiciary
The supreme leader appoints the head of the judiciary the title is chief judge. By definition, the chief judge must be a cleric. The courts system is supposed to be independent but its political role in practice reflects the ideological make up of the judges who are almost conservative clerics. They have a penal code refered to as retribution law based on a narrow read of the sharia, their penal code permits injured families blood money, which is on the principle of an eye for an eye (or a life for a life). The penal code mandates the death penalty for a long list of moral transgressions including adultery, homosexuality, drug trafficking, habitual drinking. It sanctions stoning, live burials, and amputations. The code treated men and women differently. There is an appeals system, the government appoints and can dismiss judges, the harsh punishment prescribed are rarely implemented. The court system is supposed to be independent but it is not in practice. Limited by the fact that to a person the people who get appointed to the jobs are very conservative clerics. The chief judge is a cleric and when the government goes to appoint other judges, the come out to be conservative clerics; consequently, we got a set of judges who are going to be enforcing the Islamic law. There is an appeals system and a hierarchy of courts. The guardian council decides whether or not a law is passed or not.
The bureaucracy and less than efficiently managed public sector dating back to the expansion of the shahs bureau (before the revolution) and dating to the states expropriation of property at the time of the revolution. Since the revolution the bureaucracy has been staffed by a group of non-cleric technocrats. Technocrats tend to be more educated. The technocrats of the bureaucracy maintain close ties with the church, they are sometimes referred to as the second stratum (layer) of the states and they gain education and upward mobility under the Islamic republic. Today we have bureaucrats that are rather docile functionary, they are a-political in the sense that they will work for any president cabinet. they are career civil servants and its generally said that iran’s bureaucracy is bigger than it needs to be- it’s a bit large. Its plagued with clientilism, corruption, mismanagement, patronage- these are present in probably every system. The patron client corruption really did not come up that much. The other part of the bureaucracy is the military establishment. There are two parts, one is the regular army and the other is a group called the revolutionary guards (were formed during the 79 rev). They have the job of maintaining internal security while the army is to safeguard the borders and fight off invasions. Unlike Nigeria, which has a long history of military coups and a history of rule by military leaders and military government, Iran’s military has not played an interventionist role in the country’s politics. All through the turmoil following the 79rev, the military respected orderly transfer of power, it followed the direction of the ayatollah Khomeini (which the rule is the military should stay out of politics, so they did.) it would be true that the rake and file of the revolutionary guard show signs of being divided into reformist and conservatives. The bigger point, however, the revolutionary guards are extremely loyal to the supreme leader. The guards come along during the revolution and are part of the people that helped bring Khomeini back so it is consistent with their origin.