Misagh Parsa develops a structural theory of the causes and outcomes of revolution, applying the theory in particular to Iran. He focuses on the ends and means of various groups of Iranians before, during, and after the revolution. For Parsa, revolution is not a direct result of ideologies, which may be less important than structural factors such as the nature of the state and the economy, as well as each group's interests, capacity for mobilization, autonomy, and solidarity structures. Existing theories of revolution explain earlier revolutions better than the Iranian revolution. In Iran most of the protest was in urban areas, the peasants never played a major role, and power was transferred to the clergy, not to an intelligentsia. In the 1970s, oil revenues increased, the economy developed rapidly but unevenly, and the state's expanded intervention undermined market forces and politicized capital accumulation. Systematic repression of workers, aid to the upper class, and attacks on secular and religious opposition showed that the state was serving the interests of particular groups. When the state tried to check high inflation by imposing price controls on bazaaris (merchants, shopkeepers, artisans), their protests forced the state to introduce reforms, providing an opportunity for industrial workers, white-collar workers, intellectuals, and the clergy to mobilize against the state. Thus, structural features rendered the state vulnerable to challenge and attack. Parsa's thorough explanation of the collective actions of each major group in Iran in the three decades prior to the revolution shows how a coalition of classes and groups, using mosques as safe gathering places and led by a segment of the clergy, brought down the monarch of 1979. In the years since the revolution, the conflicts that existed before the revolution seem to be reemerging, in slightly altered form. The clergy now has control, and the state has become centrally and powerfully involved in the economy of the country.

This book analyses the reform movement in Iran and the Egyptian opposition movement since the early 1990s in their historical contexts. It argues that the contemporary movements seen on the streets of the regions today represent the culmination of over twenty years of mobilisation by social movements.

Once considered of little import, the social history of labor in the Middle East emerged in the 1980s as a major area of research, as historians sought to uncover the roots of working-class organizing. This volume, the first in an important new series, presents a broad overview of recent literature on the history of workers in the Middle East since 1800 in a bold effort to bring together new directions in research and to reexamine the relevance of established ones. Contributors explore the history of labor by situating state-led industrialization within the context of older artisanal social communities. They examine how industrialization enhanced government control over the economy as a whole and analyze the public's reaction to centralized economic authority. They also explain the longevity of social coalitions supporting state industrial monopolies and examine their breakdown, along with the emergence of Islamist and other oppositional movements. Taken together the essays provide a historically grounded context for viewing the shifting relationship between states and the world economy as well as between particular states and classes and form a rich synthesis of current interdisciplinary literature on work and workers in the region.

Examines the last forty years of Iranian and Middle-Eastern history through the prism of the Green Uprisings of 2009.

This book explores the field of history through a multi-paradigmatic approach. For this purpose, it begins with a discussion of four most diverse worldviews or paradigms (namely, functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist), before moving on to consider four aspects of the field of history (historiography, grand narrative, progress, and time) from the viewpoints of the four most diverse worldviews or paradigms. Next, the book looks at three historical events (the French Revolution, the American Civil War, and the Iranian Revolution) from the viewpoints of the four most diverse worldviews or paradigms. It concludes by recommending paradigm diversity, as an understanding of different paradigms leads to a more comprehensive and a more balanced understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the subject matter.

What causes revolution? What brought about the end of the last major monarchies of the modern period? Were Louis XVI, Nicholas II, and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi the unwitting victims of historical circumstance, or did their own actions help to bring about the revolutions that overthrew them? This powerful and original book is the first comparative study of the revolutions in Bourbon France, Romanov Russia and Pahlavi Iran. Zhand Shakibi analyses fully the timing and causes of these three revolutions and reveals the important similarities between them. "Revolutions and the Collapse of Monarchy" argues provocatively that it is often the monarch's own personality that provides the vital spark which produces revolution. This ambitious and important book challenges the Marxist interpretation of history and adds a compelling new perspective to theories of revolution.

The articles in this collection provide an alternative view of Middle Eastern history by focusing on the oppressed and the excluded, offering a challenge to the usual elite narratives. The collection is unique in its historical depth - ranging from the medieval period to the present - and its geographical reach, including Iran, the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, the Balkans, the Arab Middle East and North Africa. The first to focus on the oppressed and the excluded, and their differing strategies of survival, of negotiation, and of protest and resistance, the book covers: both major social classes and sectors the working class the peasantry the urban poor women marginal groups such as gypsies and slaves Based on perspectives drawn from the work of the great European social historians, and particularly inspired by Antonio Gramsci, the collection seeks to restore a sense of historical agency to subaltern classes in the region, and to uncover ‘the politics of the people’.

Through detailed exploration of events in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen, Sean Burns here breaks down the concept of professionalism within the armed forces into its component parts and demonstrates how variation in military structures determines their behaviour. In so doing, and by emphasising historical context and drawing on a wide range of political science theory, Burns sheds fresh light onto the ways in which military structure affects the potential for democratic transition or the course of civil war. With this book he presented a wide-ranging study of the Middle East which provides key tools to understanding the opportunities for democratisation, both during the Arab Spring and beyond, and which is therefore essential reading for anyone working on the Middle East, popular uprisings and the politics of repression.