Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• Reza Alam ¹
• Farzaneh Dashti ²
• Bijan Mirzaee ²

¹ Associate Professor, Department of History, Chamran University of Ahwaz

² Assistant Professor, Department of History, Islamic Azad University

Abstract

Through radical and wide-scale social changes, renovation among Europeans led to the emergence of modern and developed societies based on modernization and with the help of bourgeoisie, absolutist, national and modern government. However, despite the attempts done in Reza Shah Reign, renovation in Iran did not lead to the creation of a modern and developed society. Renovation took place hastily in the first Pahlavi era. Because of government dominance on the power sources, incompetence and dispersion of the civic society, renovations were carried out in areas consistent with the essence and structure of an absolutist government. Thus, prevention of participation an also development of competitions enforced by the absolutist government turned Iran’s political zone to an undeveloped area in its economic and social structure. In other words, the absolutist government was against development in the political system, which led to recreation of autarchy and dictatorship. Due to basic stability and structural inadequacy, the government could not manage to solve main crises of identity, legitimacy, distribution, main internal and external conflicts and establishment of an institutional, systematic and durable stability toward capitalism and a developed society along with reinforcement of civic, democratic, national and independent bourgeoisie organizations.
In this research, we are looking for the answer to this question: Why, despite the renovation experience in the first Pahlavi era, Iran could not manage to become a modern and developed society. There for, related reasons and causes will be defined and analyzed in order to put forth a new approach to understand the lack of development and stalemate in the said era. The methodology in this article is mainly based on library activities and a historical-analytical study.

Keywords

• Reza Shah
• modernization
• Development
• Modernity
• Nation state