The State Bureaucracy And Revolution In Modern Iran

Covering the period from 1950 through 1988 this book examines the role of a powerful bureaucracy under the Shah, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and post-revolutionary changes in that bureaucracy under the Islamic Republic.

This book offers a concise and comprehensive examination of Iran's political history from the establishment of the Qajar dynasty in 1785 until the present. It focuses on both the historical evolution of Iranian political institutions as well as on the processes and phenomena to which these institutions have been exposed. Since politics do not occur within a culturally vacuous context, attention is also drawn to the dominant characteristics of Iran's political culture--from tribalism and religion to the cult of personality and political demagoguery--that have similarly shaped political life in Iran. Such characteristics have acquired added accent under the revolutionary regime of the Islamic Republic, although the revolution's gradual routinization has once again brought about a measure of political normalcy. Attention is drawn to the persistence of specific political dynamics that have proven to be particularly resilient throughout Iran's recent history. Throughout the reigns of the three regimes governing Iran since the eighteenth century--the Qajars, the Pahlavis, and the Islamic Republic--radically different from one another as they have been, the three themes of political autocracy, foreign intervention, and revolution have remained.

Using a 'Historical Institutionalist' approach, this book sheds light on a relatively understudied dimension of state-building in early twentieth century Iran, namely the quest for judicial reform and the rule of law from the 1906 Constitutional Revolution to the end of Reza Shah's rule in 1941.

A masterfully researched and compelling history of Iran from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first

Presents the historical and ideological context of recent events in Iran.

State structures, international forces, and class relations: Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations. Social revolutions have been rare but undeniably of enormous importance in modern world history. States and Social Revolutions provides a new frame of reference for analyzing the causes, the conflicts, and the outcomes of such revolutions. It develops a rigorous, comparative historical analysis of three major cases: the French Revolution of 1787 through the early 1800s, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the 1960s. Believing that existing theories of revolution, both Marxist and non-Marxist, are inadequate to explain the actual historical patterns of revolutions, Skocpol urges us to adopt fresh perspectives. Above all, she maintains that states conceived as administrative and coercive organizations potentially autonomous from class controls and interests must be made central to explanations of revolutions.

'...her short analysis of the Iranian armed forces in the 1980s is first-rate, so too is her much more substantial section on women and the state in Iran...As well as offering useful insights into the workings of the Islamic state in Iran, this readable book also provides a warning of the struggles ahead in many other Muslim societies.' - Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Times Higher Education Supplement ;Islam has been the driving force shaping the ideology and the power base of the Iranian revolution. This volume engages critically with the Islamic perspective and promises offered by the revolution. Looking at the rise of the religious institution as a revolutionary force, the author observes their post-revolutionary policies in the domains of politics, economics, education, the armed forces and women's status. In the event, the volume demonstrates that the Iranian government has failed to deliver on most, if not all, of its Islamic pledges.