Explaining the Crisis of the Green Movement in Iran (2009-2017)

The Green Movement has been the most significant challenge the Islamic Republic of Iran has confronted since the 1979 Revolution. Despite an initial flourishing, the Green Movement gradually declined and was unable to achieve its goals. It was finally forced to play in the framework of the existing order. The present study explains the reasons for which the Green Movement declined and also attempts to determine which factors affected the regression and subsequent evolution of the movement and how. Social movement failure remains a largely understudied topic, and the literature on movement emergence is much more sophisticated than the literature on movement decline. The same is true about the Green movement of Iran. To answer the raised questions, the author uses social movement theory and examines the role of political opportunities, framing, mobilizing structures and repertoires of collective action in the decline and subsequent evolution of the movement. The findings illustrate how the loss of political opportunity played a decisive role in the decline and further evolution of the movement and severely affected the movement’s mobilizing structures while indirectly affecting its framing and repertoire of collective action. The inappropriate and ambiguous framing of the movement by its leaders along with a lack of strategy to address the existing challenges, the general haphazardness and the inability to adopt efficient collective actions undermined the movement and accelerated its failure.