The State, Bureaucracy, and Revolution in Modern Iran Agrarian Reforms and Regime Politics

Subjects:

• Political Science » Comparative Politics
• Multicultural Studies » Middle East Studies

Reviews:

• Farazmand, a former bureaucrat in the Pahlavi state administration, argues that the latter functioned more to maintain the state and to control society than to provide its population with services and with help for development. In the long run, such a self-serving thrust proved destructive and was one reason for the state's final collapse in the 1979 revolution. In Farazmand's view, the Khomeini state moved in the same direction, despite more auspicious beginnings that emphasized service functions. The focus throughout is on bureaucracy in the rural areas, with detailed investigations of the role of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, as well as local government and quasi-government institutions (such as cooperatives). Strangely, no references are made to Grace Goodell's pioneering The Elementary Structures of Political Life. Goodell's ethnographic account clearly underscores the paternalistic/authoritarian nature of the Pahlavi state and critiques the World Bank-inspired model for rural development planning from above. Also missing from the bibliography is Afsaneh Najmabadi's Land Reform and Social Change in Iran. This book, is, nonetheless, a useful contribution to the literature on rural Iran, especially because it traces the evolution of increasing state bureaucratization in the countryside. Most likely users are upper-division undergraduate and graduate students.
  —Choice
• . . . The book is a useful addition to the spate of studies about recent developments in Iran's bureaucracy and its rural sector, such as those by Fred Halliday, Eric Hooglund, and others. Although there is an extensive bibliography, much of the study derives from some 150 interviews conducted by the author.
  —Perspectives on Political Science

• Endorsement From
  Fred W. Riggs
  
  
  Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii
  : Dr. Farazmand's experiences in Iran as an administrator and researcher, as illuminated by his studies in the United States, give his analysis great objectivity and balance, and politics and administration.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: State, Bureaucracy, and Revolution
• The State and Bureaucracy: The Political and Societal Environments
• The Power Position of the Bureaucracy and the Bureaucratic/Administrative Elite
• Rural Iran before the Agrarian Reforms
• Agrarian Reforms and Regime Politics
• Rural Bureaucratization: Social Control and Economic Expansion
• Rural Bureaucratization and Regime Politics
• Bureaucracy and Revolution
• Bibliography
• Index