From Zero to Soldier: What if Entrepreneurial Success Comes at the Cost of Democracy?

Are democracy and entrepreneurship inextricably linked? This recurring question has received contradictory responses, but the literature still lacks in-depth analyses and theorizations on it. The present work examines an extreme case of the coexistence between entrepreneurship and authoritarianism and adopts two profound theories in development studies to explain the mechanism and origin of this symbiosis and justify why such an inextricable link does not exist, at least universally. Studying the success pathway of Iran’s triumphed startups (i.e., unicorns) with the theoretical lens of durable inequality and limited and open access orders, this work has revealed that Iran’s unicorns have navigated two checkpoints, namely connection and collaboration, with the extant political system. Accordingly, the success pathway beneath Iran’s entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) is identified as an inequality-producing process, called opportunity hoarding, for its cause and as its ultimate effect, the country’s social arrangement, the basic limited access order, is proposed.