The Iranian Revolution Flashcards
(14 cards)
Explain how the Iranian Revolution was a a genuine social revolution not just a political revolution
There had never been a religiously inflected revolutionary discourse that led to actual large scale political & social upheaval in the 20th century.
The difference were a political rev changes the regime leadership/institutions, but it doesn’t change the broader social setup of society/class relationships. It was a much more thorough rejigging of social structures in Iran. A complete old class elites, were removed. The state apparatus was completely revamped, all the way down to kind of village level bureaucracy, reshaped the judicial system, the education system, the media, the public sphere.
Was the Iranian Revolution predicted?
Most observers/local actors, did not predict it because they thought the Shah had a very comprehensive, very brutal security apparatus. He controlled a very large state. He had been successful to some extent with social & industrial modernisation. He seemed to be one of the more forward looking, more modern monarchs/leaders in the whole Muslim Middle East. So there was a lot of unrest towards the end of the 70s, but the toppling of the Shah was unexpected.
What are the historical context facts about the Iranian Revolution
Had the authoritarian Shah from 1953
The Shah and made him very unpopular throughout the next few decades because he was seen by a lot of people as a Western puppet.
Had a very thorough economic modernisation agenda. He built a lot of industries & tried to fight back some of the traditional economic interests including the old merchant class, the bazaar elites. He tried to create a new state that would push back those old, relatively politically independent merchant elites.
Had a very thorough social modernisation agenda where he wanted women to stop wearing the veil, created secular modes of education, try to push back religious influences from the education and the judicial sector. All of those didn’t necessarily go down well in a society that was still predominantly Muslim and conservative.
The initial opposition against the Shah was national, secular, liberal, leftist. But it became increasingly religious. Khomeini was trying to set up something that was completely local and genuine, a reinvention of Shiism, but it was something that was very explicitly in distinction to any Western ideology.
What are the important facts about the Iranian Revolution
There was continued dissidence in 1970s. There were liberal protests mostly led by people who remembered the 1953 events. They were anti-imperialist but politically wanted a liberal democratic regime to replace the Shah or for the Shah to make partial reforms towards a constitutional, liberally oriented monarchy. It was mostly urban.
At the time there was also many Shiite clergymen & leaders who thought Shiism is an apolitical religion. But there was a small group of clergymen, Khomeini, most prominently, who believed politics and religion are inherently linked, and in the most extreme case of Khomeini, that it should be clergymen who should be in charge of politics. So that took on a much larger volume. So you had thousands and tens of thousands of people in those demonstrations.
In 1978 you had larger strikes. Also had some mobilisation among workers particularly port & oil sector workers- large demonstrations and quite heavy repression. The secret police and other forces killing quite a few demonstrators.
Backfired and mobilised a lot more people leading to chaos in early 1979, a brief armed insurrection.
The revolutionary forces took over with a broader coalition that included liberals and leftists, but with the religious forces around Khomeini very much in the driving seat.
They organised the referendum in April 1979, creating a new Islamic republic, ending the monarchy and then in December creating a new constitution
How does Historical sociology attempt to explain the Iranian Revolution
They try to explain what happened in Iran with big structural forces.
The broad theme was that the state was really unmoored from societies. The Shah wasn’t in touch with what was happening in society. He had a very high level of political autonomy to modernise agriculture or secularised the schooling system or marginalise the traditional bazaar merchant class because he had oil rents. So he didn’t have to negotiate with society. For a while that worked & empowered him, but it disconnected him from society/large interest groups.
What is Abrahamian’s argument about the Iranian Revolution
A leftist argued “politics of uneven development” which said that the problem in Iran was not about the state, instead state society was underdeveloped, or too developed, but there was very uneven development. On the one hand, rapid social and economic development, but on the other hand, the state apparatus was still a traditional, despotic one man regime.
What is Halladay’s argument about the Iranian Revolution
About a conflict between capitalist development, on the one hand that was driven by the Shah & his modern agenda, & traditional institutions & attitudes, & on the other both the traditional clergy & merchant class that was closely socially & culturally tied to the clerical class & that just felt threatened by modern capitalist development.
What is Keddie’s argument about the Iranian Revolution
An international relations perspective. So for her, it’s mostly a reaction to westernisation and imperialism, and particularly to the history of U.S. involvement and subversion, most prominently the CIA engineered coup of 1953.
The revolution is primarily a reaction to the rapid, exploitative growth of Western influence of Western rulers and of new forms of imperialism in the intervening period. This reaction to Western social, political and cultural influence
Why and how did Skocpol revise her argument after the Iranian Revolution
She had just published states and social revolutions a couple of months before the rev happened and this appeared to go against it because the revolution very much follows a blueprint that had been written by Khomeini 16 years earlier, in 1963, in exile in Iraq.
So she said that Iran is a case where the revolution was made & it didn’t come. But, beyond that, she still thinks that a lot of her structural analysis is useful for understanding what happened in Iran. But she reinterprets structure in an innovative way.
What does Skocpol’s revision suggest
Adds that Iran being a rentier state meant the gov was largley financed through rents giving the regime a high level of autonomy as you don’t have to tax the local bourgeoisie/local property interests so they didn’t have to negotiate with those powerful interests. So a lot of his modernisation drive etc were oil financed which is what mobolised people against him. A rentier state is a structural factor so broadly fits into the structural analysis.
Acknowledges cultural factors played a role but she thinks of them as a structural repertoire.
They are diffused & widespread throughout society. Khomeini very clearly aimed for that revolutionary outcome. That’s another difference that she concedes. Those ideas are important, but they only work because of structural factors, notably the autonomous organisational capacities & resources that the rev movement could draw on.
- So the urban communities had the bazaar/ traditional merchant class with its own spaces, that had large material resources that could do things like provide the rev movement with fax machines/shelter/ places to hide/places to meet
- It also had the imagery of Shiit Islam/ martyrdom. Had certain rituals like Albertine where after the death of someone 40 days later you had a silent procession. Those were all tools that were used that were appropriated for political purposes, whereas previously there was just a social ritual. 40 days after demonstrators were killed, you had silent procession that were inspired by this or were framed as this religious ritual, but really were a political mobilisation tool. She thinks of these as a structured resource as the symbols are widespread in society and could be activated/repurposed by the revolutionary leaders.
What does the political opportunity structures approach say about the Iranian Revolution
Large scale social mobilisation happens when there’s an opportunity to do so. In the Iranian case, the argument was that the large scale mobilisation was because there was a temporary opportunity for people to do that at comparatively lower cost/risk, because President Carter had a relatively strong human rights and a pro-democracy agenda. So he put pressure on the Shah to open up politically and to dial down his repression.
What does the resource mobilisation approach say about the Iranian Revolution
Idea social movements can only act in a large scale, sustained way if they have autonomous resources to draw on. This has been invoked in the context of the bazaar.
Also had the mosque network that was used to to rally people, sometimes hide, as a focal point for gathering before demonstrations.
These things didn’t have to be reinvented. There was an existing template of getting people out into the street that we can think of as a social resource for those movements.
What is Kurzman’s argument about the Iranian Revolution
- Economic deprivation was perhaps not sufficient in explaining revolutionary mobilisation, but it was a necessary component. The recession in 1978 no more severe than in mid-1970s when protests died down again; groups that suffered the most (e.g. construction workers) were not the most revolutionary
- Cultural resources argument Shia themes and collective rituals were drastically modified. Previously Shi’ism was widely seen as quietist strand of Islam. Under traditional Shiite ideology Muslims are told to wait/lay low/stay out of politics until the hidden Imam comes back from hiding. Some, potentially many believed that Khomeini was the hidden imam.
- Political opportunity structure- while Carter exerted some pressure on the Shah to not be quite as repressive liberalisation was limited, & both protests took place in the context of rescinded liberalisation, following political crackdowns in March 1975 & Nov 1977.
- Resource mobilisation- Cosmo says that many clerical leaders refused to mobilise. Many were believers in traditional, apolitical Shiite Islam and thought Khomeini’s ideas were a completely illicit innovation. And parts of the mosque network had to be commandeered by revolutionaries. So the prayer leaders, didn’t welcome them.
Compare the strengths and weaknesses of Skocpol and Kurzman’s arguments
Kurzman has some points that none of those components individually are sufficient but he probably goes too far in throwing out structuralist arguments altogether.
The idea that the Shah was a ruler who was structurally disconnected because he could rents and then could embark on various social and economic experiments that were very unpopular makes sense.
Kurtzman is correct the role of Khomeini or the Shah is under specified. If the Shah had made different decisions, or liberalised earlier, or repressed more consistently/brutally that probably wouldn’t have been a revolutionary outcome.
Khamenei is essential because the blueprint of the 1979 constitution and no one else had come up with an institutional setup. So without him, the outcome would have been very different. Second the whole idea of turning Shiite Islam into a revolutionary ideology came from him and it’s unclear anyone else would have.
But the broader context that got people upset/mobilised them in the first place is amenable to some form of structural explanation. There were a range of diverse but systematic and social analysable structural reasons for mobilisation. The campaign against the bazaar created class antagonism. Also, the white revolution by the Shah in which he tried to modernise the countryside rubbed a lot of property owner in rural areas the wrong way.
Agency there is a broader theory of what the Shah systematically did wrong. The oil rents don’t predict what he does with that power, but it’s still a broader structural backdrop that explains why agency is so important in the first place.
