The economic modernization and the Islamic revolution – Part one

Abstract

The change of the Iranian monarchy to an Islamic republic is considered an important event in the contemporary political history of this nation. The question of why such an event occurred in the Pahlavi era, and the circumstances and requirements for its development, have attracted the attention of researchers to the modernization policies adhered to in the Pahlavi era.
In this article, we focus on the question and lay an overall emphasis on the structural imbalance between political development and economic development, and while doing so, the main focus is on the following two points:
1. The formation of the new social forces that are calling for more political participation.
2. How to prevent the political institution of forces demanding political participation, as a determining factor for the development of a revolutionary situation.

Introduction

Revolution is a resonant word that, especially in the twentieth century which was called the era of revolution, has preoccupied many minds and in search of its causes, different theories have been raised. Aristotle was the first philosopher who spoke about the idea that man suddenly rebels, overthrowing the ruling class, and since then there have been different theories and different views available to find the right answers to these questions.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, as a great development, has occupied the social sciences and the political thought by many scholars. Islamic revolution in Iran was reported as a surprising and unexpected phenomenon and attracted the thought of many expert. The fundamental question for the experts was whether the Islamic Republic of Iran is unique, as none of the existing theories can explain the Islamic Revolution in Iran, like other revolutions in the world which can fit into the existing theories? To find an appropriate response to this question, many works were written. The authors of the works published sought to explain this phenomenon and looked for answers with regard to the realities of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic of Iran with the help of existing theories.
The views by which the studies of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been carried out are:
1. Marxist views
2. Functionalist views
3. The mobilization theories
4. The renewal view.
From these perspectives, this study suggests that the theory of modernization and institutionalized (Modernization and Institution) offered by Samuel Huntington is used to study the role of economic modernization in explaining the Islamic Revolution. The main question of this study is whether the Pahlavi has played a role era in the field of economic modernization in the Islamic Republic of Iran?
While this study focuses on the heterogeneity of the development of political and economic development in the Pahlavi era, it also considers two important points:
1. The formation of the new social forces (middle class) who are demanding political participation.
2. How to prevent political institutions and political forces from participating in politics as a determining factor for the development of a revolutionary situation.
The theoretical framework of the research: Modernization and institutionalization
In this study, using Huntington's theory, we have attempted to study the Iranian Islamic Revolution. The concept of modernization is a key concept in Huntington’s theory, modernization has various aspects of psychology, demography, economics and political dimensions which are essential in the theory of economic and political modernization. Economic modernization in the theory of economic development is the growth of economic activity and the efficiency of the entire community. From this perspective, economic modernization means creating a diversity of economic activities and jobs, the jobs as an alternative to the complex and diverse businesses which are augmented by not only simple and limited groupings of kinship, and ethnic and religious groupings but also careers and professions.
Political modernization means to move from a traditional political society to a modern political community, which entails:
1-The moderation of political authority, in the sense that the majority of political authorities such as the traditional religious and ethnic figures are replaced by national and secular authorities forming a single political authority.
2-Political modernization and development of differentiated functions of modern political structures are needed for each of these functions. Separating the political functions leads to distinguishing the specific areas of legal, military, and administrative science from the area of politics.
3. The renewal of political participation of different social groups in political affairs is needed. So that in the new political community, people are involved directly in the affairs of the government and cab play a more active role in political decision-making.
Thus, the transformation and modernization are in practice usually associated with a failure of the traditional political system, but not they are not necessarily more effective movements in order to create a new political system.
The renewal process has consequences that include:

1. Creating awareness:

Modernization can through the industrialization mechanisms, communication growth and urbanization, not only increase the class knowledge but can also increase the other kinds of mass consciousness, such as the tribal, regional, religious and professional knowledge. Therefore, all the groups gain awareness of their own welfare and interests as compared with the other groups.

2. Increasing and expanding the political participation requests:

The openness of the areas of political participation is the inevitable consequence of modernization. Renovation brings about some new social and economic groups that did not exist in the community or were outside the traditional political zones of the traditional society. Renovation also gives them political knowledge and political activism movements. In other words, social changes such as urbanization, industrialization, higher levels of literacy and education, the development of mass media, and political consciousness have expanded the range of applications and have increased political participation.
One of the key concepts in the theory proposed by Huntington is institutionalization. The role of political institutions is very significant in attracting the participation of social forces, especially in countries undergoing a process of modernization that are normally faced with the increasing participation request. The ability to implement political institutions to recruit the applicants' participation in the political institutions depends on the degree of political participation as a function of the relationship between political institutions and the social component of such institutions. In simple societies (Durkheim’s interpretation of mechanical societies) communities can indeed survive without politics, or at least without political institutions. Nevertheless, in a complex society (Durkheim’s view according to the organic community) the community involvement is achieved by political action and is preserved by the political institutions.
The political participation of social forces leads to political organization when it is institutionalized in the political system or when the political system will be institutionalized. Institutionalization means efficiency in political institutions in order to create paths for political involvement groups which express their requests. More precisely, institutionalization is a process during which the value and stability of their political practices are perceived.
The most important tools for institutionalizing the political participation of the masses and organizing them are: political parties, elections and legislatures (legislative assemblies) and, in this case, the political parties play a more important role in the institutionalization of political participation of the masses. The function of political parties is to organize political participation, integration and also the connection between the social forces and the government interests. The organized and extensive political participation of the people in the paths modified through the process of political education leads to drastic changes in the attitudes and behavior of the most active members of these groups.

The nature and characteristics of traditional political systems

From the perspective proposed by Huntington, the communities that are undergoing modernization often have the traditional political systems. Traditional political systems have different forms, one of which is the royal system. The contemporary monarchies in the world can be divided into two categories: modern and traditional. In the modern monarchy, the king reigns, but the ultimate source of authority and legitimacy are the people. The king is viewed as the head of the state and the symbol of national unity, identity and continuity. The Cabinet is appointed by the political parties who are elected by the parliament and are responsible for the people. The king can choose the prime minister only when there is no political leadership in parliament and no party has achieved the required majority.
The traditional monarchy consists of the monarchy of influential figures (that is, oligarchy) and the ruling monarchy. In the oligarchic monarchy, the King only reigns and is seen as the only source of legitimacy but the real power lies in the hands of the influential bureaucrats and the military groups that act in his name. Under such a monarchy ruling, the Shah's monarchy and the government legitimacy is considered as the main references which have an active and efficient role in the governance. The real power of the king can be shared with other groups and institutions.
The problem of the traditional political system is to adapt to the process of political participation which is inevitable by the consequences of modernization. The king is faced with a paradox for the modernization and renewal. On the one hand, the concentration of power is in the hands of the king to reform the social, economic and cultural needs. On the other hand, the same focused power makes it harder to attract new groups who are the products of modernization. In other words, the legitimacy of the reform depends on the king's authority, but the legitimacy of the political system in the long term depends on the participation of the social groups within the system. Elections, legislatures and political parties and the organization of political participation are of the institutionalized methods. However, the Shah's reforms depend on the absence of elections, parliaments and political parties.
The emergence of a revolutionary situation from the perspective of Huntington can be the result of the failure of political institutions in the replacement of new routes to attract the participation of social groups in the state. In other words, meeting the request of political participation of new groups and the lack of integration into the political system and its suppression by the political system can pave the way for revolutionary conditions.
In general, Huntington's theory about the emergence of the revolutionary conditions can be formulated as in the following model:
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From this model, various hypotheses can be extracted and examined and for the limited scope of this article and the research priority, the following assumption will be studied:
"In Iran, the emergence of new social classes in economic modernization were calling for political participation conducive to creating a revolutionary situation.”

Research method

In this paper, the theoretical definitions and the operational analysis of documents are presented under the assumptions and hypotheses that were tested.

A) Theoretical definitions:

1. New social classes and groups: they are the sections that were created as a result of the process of modernization and did not exist in the traditional society already. These segments include: state bureaucrats, students, intellectuals, doctors, bankers, businessmen, and lawyers which make up the new middle class. In addition, the new class of industrial workers have been created by the economic modernization.
2. The economic modernization means industrialization and this implies going through a stage of agricultural activities and further gaining access to industrial activities.
3. The question of political participation means involvement in the decision-making political demands through political organizations.
4. The revolutionary conditions mean the emergence of a severe crisis of political legitimacy as a result of failure to attract any participation by the forces demanding political participation and their being oppressed by the state.

B) Operational definitions:

The concepts for the measurement of various parameters according to the theories of Huntington and other resources are taken into consideration separately.

The new social classes

In general terms, in the field of study dealing with the social strata, there are some criteria that should be viewed such as income, occupation, the education level and the social status of professions. In this study, based on the research done in the area of stratification, one’s occupation was considered as the main indicator. The changes in the labor composition or the level of employment in the services sector and industry were used to assess the new social strata (the new middle class; the industrial working class). In this study, what we mean by the industrial working class is the number of people employed in the industrial sector (It should be noted that, in this study, the industrial working class is not used and implied in the Marxist sense).

Economic modernization

Oftentimes, this term is used to measure the various parameters used in the economic modernization. These indicators have been obtained from the research done in this area and, according to Huntington's theory. The indicators that are usually used for economic modernization are:
Investment in different economic sectors, energy consumption per capita, GDP, the share of industry and the services in GDP.
Among the factors described in this study, increasing the share of industry and services in GDP and investments in different economic sectors in the time period 1356-1338 were selected and studied.
The reason for selecting this time period is the lack of information and statistical data related to the years before 1338.

The demand for political participation

Usually, the question of political participation is assessed by the increase in the number of parameters such as the formation of political parties and their members. However, due to the lack of necessary data collection in the field of the political use of the knowledge, we assume that increasing political awareness will lead to increased political participation. In this study, to assess the political consciousness, indicators such as the literacy rate and the number of newspapers published in the country were used.

The conditions for Revolution

Indicators commonly used to measure the revolutionary situation, especially in the functionalist theories, including the theory proposed by Chalmers Johnson revolution are of the following kind: increasing the rate of repression measured by criteria such as the increase in the suicide rate, increase in the number of the police officers compared with the general population, increase in the rate of military cooperation which means a rise in the number of the military forces compared with the entire population. In this study, from the measures that Chalmers Johnson suggests, military participation was considered as the main indicator. In addition to the military cooperation, the military budget is presented as the other indicator investigated in this study. It should be noted that due to the secrecy of the statistics relating to the armed forces, the specification of the military budget available to all statistics relating to the participation of military and the defense budget was not possible, so the statistics that have been used in this field are recorded by the Journal of The Military Balance and they belong to some particular years.

The study of the resaerch hypothesis

The main hypothesis of this paper was that "the emergence of new social classes as a result of economic modernization led to demanding political participation which was conducive to the creation of a revolutionary situation. This hypothesis is tested and investigated below using the operational definitions and the parameters and indicators which were mentioned earlier in this study.

The formation of new social classes and groups

As discussed in the theoretical framework from the perspective of economic, modernization as proposed by Huntington creates professional groupings and also creates jobs that did not exist previously in the traditional society. Industrialization and the concentration of activities in the cities and, furthermore, the actions taken by the kings who were interested in the concept of renewal lead to a new system of bureaucracy in order to create a unified and centralized army. The encouragement of economic growth and the development of transportation and the communications industry have prepared the ground for the emergence of the field of expertise that never before existed in traditional communities.
New social classes that arise as a result of these factors include: the new middle class (people working in the service sector) that contains elements of the civil employees, military officers, lawyers, engineers, technicians, employers and managers. The working class is among the masses which has been formed by the achievement of the economic modernization process and this particular class is working within the manufacturing sectors.
In Huntington's opinion, the new urban class is the most revolutionary class and within an urban middle class, the intellectuals and educated people are the main elements of a possible revolution.

The new middle class in Iran

Economic modernization in Iran during the years 1304 to 1357 led to the increased number of employees in the industrial sections and in public services. In addition to this, with the development of new administrative organizations and with the establishment of Western-style education ministries and development in other areas, a new middle class emerged and grew in Iran to create social and economic changes in the country. The economic modernization in Iran was created by the administrative organizations in the sense that the establishment of new organizations that were run by a centralized method was an appropriate way of control by the state and also created the ground for social and economic alterations in the country. Through the administrative organizations, it was possible for the government to interfere in all the aspects of social and economic life. In fact, the implementation of the governmental widespread plans in construction, railways, and direct intervention in making factories in various fields of industry, distribution of water pipes, building dams, telephone and communication technologies, and creating TV and radio facilities, establishing universities and other elements essentially caused the governmental institutions to be developed following this procedure due to the intervention of the state in different activities.
Through the ministries, the government took charge in all the areas of commerce and industry such as the mining, the economy, and agriculture and education activities. Along with the expansion of quantitative and qualitative management of each ministry, the economic, cultural, social and political responsibilities of the administrative organizations that worked under each ministry increased.
By increasing the number of administrative bodies, the number of state employees has increased and, moreover, with the expansion of the education system, a vast number of the educated people were generally working in offices their number also were on the rise.
Table 1: The number of state employees by year
51 / 50 / 45 / 35
849000 – 775000 – 663000 – 451000 - year / public servants
Source: Statistical Center of Iran, expressed developments, Page 43
If the forces employed in the services sector contained the members of the new class, then the process of increasing the quantity of workers in the service sector can be seen in the time interval been the censuses. As you can see, the percentage of workers in the service sector has increased from 23.6 percent to 31.8 percent within three censuses.
Table 2: Percentage of workers in the service sector
55 / 45 / 35 years
31/7 - 26/7 - 23/6 percent
Source: Statistical Center of Iran, census done for the years, 35, 45, 55
Doctor Adibi has collected in his book, which deals with the new middle class in Iran, the extent and composition of this social class in a table.
Table 3: the scope and composition of the new middle class in Iran in 1970
The total number of the educated experts - 34400 - 167500
Engineers and intellectuals educated in the fields of natural sciences 6800 175000
Doctors and related occupations 9500 / artists -----
Social scientists and academics related occupations 3,800 3,700
Lawyers and judges of 60,000 students in 4300
Technicians in various fields - 10000
Superior authorities - 1700
Managers - 9700
Source: Adibi, Hussein, the new middle class in Iran, Page 95
For Dr. Adibi, these form the pivotal basis of the new class in Iran.
The industrial working class
With the development and construction of numerous factories and massive investment in the various fields of industry, the basis for the creation of a new class of industrial workers was prepared in Iran. With the development of the manufacturing industries, and especially since the beginning of Reza Shah era, during which these industries had grown growth between 1317-1311, the number of workers employed in these plants increased dramatically. Sadly, there is not enough information about the labor (industrial) forces during Reza Shah's time there and what is available to us are the estimates of the number of workers who were active during those years.
According to industry estimates provided by Abdullah Yef, the number of the industrial laborers in 1319 was about 260,100 people. Another estimate confirms that the number of the labor force in Iran was about 525000, of which 250,000 were employed in traditional industries.
Julian Barear in his book which was entitled “Economy in Iran” has mentioned that the number of the workers during the years 1305-1226 has been about 40,421 people.
In his book, entitled “the difficulties of creating jobs in Iran”, William Barch has made use of a table to show the employment rate in various fields between the two economic censuses taken. According to the statistics provided by Barch, in 1335, about 816 thousand industrial workers worked in factories and this makes up the number of 13/18% of all workers. In 1345, this number rose to 1268000 million people, of which 1.17 percent of the total number of the employed people are considered.
If the forces employed in the industrial section consist of the members of the labor class, using the figures obtained from the censuses, the increasing percentage of workers employed in the industrial sector can be seen in the table below.
Table 4: The percentage of workforce employed in the industrial sector
55 - 45 - 35 - years
34/2 27/1 20/1 percent
Source: the census during the years, 35, 45, 55