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Pseudoparticipation and Countermobilization: Roots of the Iranian Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jerrold D. Green
Jerrold D. Green*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

The Iranian revolution presents a unique challenge to social scientists. Marked by massive popular participation (primarily in urban areas), by the rejection of violence by the revolutionaries, and by the rapid fulfillment of its goals, the Iranian experience seems to elude prevailing paradigms for the study of revolution. Although there were several factors that made the country ripe for revolution—widespread feelings of relative deprivation, a state apparatus under pressure from the international system, impeded elite circulation, and conflicts among various social classes—none of these alone can explain why the upheaval occurred. While it is unlikely that a definitive explanation of the revolution can ever be found, virtually all theories of revolution implicitly ask two questions: (1) What social conditions lead to revolution, and (2) What is the nature of participation in such revolutions? It is with the first of these questions that this essay is primarily concerned.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 1-4: Iranian Revolution in Perspective , 1980 , pp. 31 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1980

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Footnotes

I would like to thank David Gordon for useful comments on this paper.

References

Notes

1. For an analysis emphasizing popular frustrations over relative deprivation see, Gurr, Ted, why Men Rebel (Princeton, 1969)Google Scholar; for a state apparatus under pressure from the international system see, Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (New York, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for impeded elite circulation see, Pareto, Vilfredo, The Mind and Society (New York, 1935)Google Scholar or Putnam, Robert, The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs, 1976)Google Scholar; and for conflict between social classes see, Lenin, V. I., The State and Revolution (New York, 1971).Google Scholar

2. Salert, Barbara, Revolutions and Revolutionaries: Four Theories (New York, 1976), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

3. For a complete discussion of this notion see, Huntington, Samuel P., “The Political Modernization of Traditional Monarchies,” Daedalus 95 (Summer, 1966), p. 766.Google Scholar

4. Deutsch, Karl W., “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” The American Political Science Review 54 (September, 1961).Google Scholar

5. Weiner, Myron, “Political Participation: Crisis of the Political Process,” Crises and Sequences in Political Development, Binder, Leonard et al., eds. (Princeton, 1971).Google Scholar

6. Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968).Google Scholar

7. Huntington, Samuel P. and Nelson, Joan M., No Easy Choice: Political Participation in Developing Countries (Cambridge, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Apter, David, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago, 1976).Google Scholar

9. In part, the success of Soviet efforts at political mobilization may be attributed to its large size and the relative isolation of its citizens from the outside world.

10. Ervand Abrahamian, “Structural Causes of the Iranian Revolution,” MERIP Reports, No. 87, 10 (May 1980), p. 23.

11. Kazemi, Farhad, Poverty and Revolution in Iran: The Migrant Poor, Urban Marginality and Politics (New York, 1980), p. 91.Google Scholar

12. These literacy rates are meant to be illustrative as it is impossible to verify their accuracy. They were provided by officials of the Ministry of Education in Tehran, “off the record,” yet still seem to underestimate levels of illiteracy. For example, according to Lois Beck (personal communication), illiteracy among rural women may reach as high as 85 to 90 percent.

13. These data, taken from United Nations statistical sources, are presented in Askari, Hossein and Cummings, John Thomas, Middle East Economies in the 1970's: A Comparative Approach (New York, 1976), p. 298.Google Scholar

14. Personal interview, Tehran, November 1978.

15. For example, Zonis's, Marvin The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton, 1971)Google Scholar, was purchased by many university libraries. After determination that the book was critical of the existing order, it was removed from the shelves of most of them. Ironically, most card catalogues listed the book long after it became unavailable. Another instance of blatant government interference with academic affairs occurred at the Aspen Institute Persepolis Symposium in September of 1975. In addition to obvious SAVAK attendance at the Symposium, we now know that SAVAK agents put pressure on Iranian contributors to the volume which grew out of the conference. The book, Jacqz, Jane W. (ed.), Iran: Past, Present, and Future (Aspen, 1976)Google Scholar, in many places reflects the views of the regime rather than objective scholarship.

16. Graham, Robert, Iran: The Illusion of Power (London, 1978), pp. 200–201.Google Scholar

17. The number of Iranian university students is a rough estimate based on earlier trends combined with decreases in governmental expenditures in higher education after the failure of the fifth Five Year Plan. Robert Graham, in Iran: The Illusion of Power, reports that in 1976 Iran had a total student population of 154,000 (p. 205). For earlier student populations see Eicher, Carl K. et al., An Analysis of U.S.-Iranian Cooperation in Higher Education (Washington, D.C., 1976).Google Scholar

18. Hamid Mowlana, “U.S.-Iranian Relations, 1954-1978: A Case of Cultural Domination,” an unpublished paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference, Salt Lake City (November, 1979), p. 5.

19. These quotations are from the editors’ preface to Tehranian, Majid, Hakimzadeh, Farhad, and Vidale, Marcello, eds., Communications Policy for National Development: A Comparative Perspective (London, 1977), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

20. For NIRT's budget see ibid., p. 261. For more general budget information see Plan and Budget Organization, Iran's 5th Development Plan, 1973-1978: Revised (Tehran, 1975).Google Scholar

21. A particularly influential critique of the shah's infatuation with the West and its costs for Iranian society may be found in Al-Ahmad, Jalal, Gharbzadegi (Tehran, 1962).Google Scholar

22. Halliday, Fred, Iran: Dictatorship and Development (New York, 1979), p. 19.Google Scholar

23. In addition to Al-Ahmad's important book cited in note 21, see Shari'ati's copious lectures and writings. Among those available in English are Marxism and Other Western Fallacies, translated by Campbell, R. (Berkeley, 1980)Google Scholar; Reflections of a Concerned Muslim: On the Plight of Oppressed Peoples, translated by Bahzadnia, A. and Denny, N. (Houston, n.d.)Google Scholar; The visage of Muhammad, translated by Sachedina, A. A. (Houston, 1979)Google Scholar; On the Sociology of Islam, translated by Algar, H. (Berkeley, 1979).Google Scholar

24. In choosing the name Rastakhiz, the shah may have been trading on a well-known book written by a close associate of Mosaddeq which argued that only through unification could Iran reach greater pluralism. I thank Paul Sprachman at the University of Chicago for pointing out this interesting coincidence. Amir Ala'i, Mosaddeq va Rastakhiz-e Melli-ye Iran (Tehran, n.d.).

25. Kayhan Research Associates, Iran Yearbook: 1977/2535 (Tehran, 1977), p. 68.Google Scholar

26. See Graham, Iran: Illusion of Power, pp. 94-97.

27. Amnesty International had long been critical of Iran's record in the area of human rights. See for example, Amnesty International, Briefing on Iran (London, 1976).Google Scholar

28. The great civilization “campaign” was preceded by a book of the same name just as was the White Revolution. Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza Shah, Beh Su-ye Tamaddon-e Bozorg (Tehran, 1978).Google Scholar

29. Bill, James, “Iran and the Crisis of 1978,” Foreign Affairs 57, No. 2 (Winter 1978-79), p. 333.Google Scholar

30. For an insightful review of events in this period see Ervand Abrahamian, “Iran: The Political Challenge,” MERIP Reports, No. 69, 8 (July-August 1978).

31. These poems were compiled and published by Mo'azzen, Naser, ed., Dah Shab: Shabha-ye Sha'eran va Nevisandegan dar Anjoman-e Farhangi-ye Iran va Alman (Tehran, 1978).Google Scholar

32. In toasting the shah, President Carter stated, “Iran under the great leadership of the shah is an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas in the world. This is a great tribute to you, Your Majesty, and to your leadership, and to the respect, admiration, and love which your people give to you.”

33. As Hamid Algar writes, “[Khomeini's] fame and popularity rest…not so much upon his learning—in which Shari'atmadari and others are acknowledged to excel him—as upon his forthright and uncompromising hostility to the Shah's regime.” Algar, Hamid, “The Oppositional Role of the Ulama in Twentieth-Century Iran,” Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions since 1500, ed. Keddie, Nikki R. (Berkeley, 1972), p. 245.Google Scholar

34. Khomeini's father is believed to have been killed by an official of the state, the mayor of Khomein, and his son Mustafa died under mysterious circumstances in 1977, presumably at the hands of SAVAK. These events, when combined with those surrounding his exile in 1963 and subsequent antiregime activities, all contributed to Ayatollah Khomeini's antishah legitimacy and credibility.

35. The term countermobilization was first used by Burnham, Walter Dean, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York, 1970), pp. 137–138.Google Scholar

36. Sepehr Zabih underestimates the role of religion in the revolution in Iran's Revolutionary Upheaval: An Interpretive Essay (San Francisco, 1979).Google Scholar Hamid Algar, on the other hand, errs in the other direction. See for example, Siddiqui, Kalim, ed., The Islamic Revolution in Iran, transcript of a four-lecture course given by Hamid Algar at the Muslim Institute (London, 1980).Google Scholar

37. By demobilization, I refer to the partial disintegration of the antishah coalition upon his ouster. This demobilization has included tension within the religious sector itself, the political demise of well-known personalities such as Mehdi Bazargan, Ibrahim Yazdi, and Abol-Hasan Banisadr, and dissatisfaction among various ethnic minorities and middle-class groups over the direction taken by the revolution.

38. Siddiqui, The Islamic Revolution in Iran, p. 65.

39. Levine, Daniel, ed., Churches and Politics in Latin America (Bevery Hills, 1979), pp. 16–37.Google Scholar