فصلنامه علوم اجتماعی
سال پانزدهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 43، پاییز و زمستان 1387)

Not only place and time of Iran Islamic revolution occurrence was not anticipatable, but also it has some different features in comparison to other (third world) revolutions. Because o this features, three decades of study on this event characterized with a kind of revision in coceptualization and explanation of revoution. In other words, Islamic revolution challenged routine explanations, so that kinds of structural, organizational and cultural explanations alternatively replaced each other as dominant analytical frameworks, This article seeks to show how these developments take place.

This paper is an attempt to study some of the explanations of the Islamic revolution of Iran, including explanations based on the theories of mass society, modern world system, rapid modernization, uneven development, personalized state power structure, the weakness of the state repressive apparatus, the vulnerability of the rentier state, discourse analysis, and gnostical theories.. For this purpose first, the theoretical framework and the main questions and hypothes,s of these works have been introduced. In the next step, the explanations of the Islamic revolution of Iran on the basis of these frameworks have been elaborated and criticized.

The present article is an attempt to study the discourse of political Islam, as one of the most important discourses in the contemporary history of Iran, and to compare its pertineat sub-discourses before the revolution. The main question of the present paper is: what are the similarities and dissimilarities among and dissimilarities among these sub-discourses? How far the post-revolution political system was influenced by these sub-discourses? The main hypothesis of the paper is: the post-revolution political system was the natural affspring of the dialogues among these political sub-discourses, and represents their commonalities.

The motive of the participants in the revolutionary activities in the years 1356-57 (1977-78) as well as their present satisfaction with the occurrence of the revolution was studied in a research which resulted in the present paper. Using scientific comments about the cause of the eruption of the revolution and a post-revolution assessment, the research compiled 6 hypotheses and tested them by means of a surveying method with 500 samples from individuals of more than 45 years of age who had been selected by a quota method. The results of the research showed that 42% of the participants in the revolution had the motive of safeguarding the Islamic values, 20% were not satisfied with the Shah’s regime and 7.3% sought better economic condition. Some 38% of the respondents believed that political objectives of the revolution have been materialized more than other objectives while 62% were much satisfied with the occurrence of the revolution and satisfaction of 20% of them was at a medium level. The relation between the religiousness and achievement of the goals of the revolution from the point of view of the respondents as well as their satisfaction with the occurrence of the revolution were also confirmed. Moreover, the relation between the extent of participation in the revolutionary activities and the positive approach toward the materialization of the objectives of the revolution and satisfaction with its occurrence were also approved

Revolutionary regimes have two possibilities: continuation or discontinuation. Islamic Republic of Iran as a nation-state in international arena, has protected itself against political crisese and has continued during three decades. The aim of the present study was to analyse the effective factors influencing continuation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We reviewed and analysed the roles of the Islamic Republic Party (Hezbe-Jomhouri-e-Eslami), and the charismatic leader ship of Imam Khomeini in the process of consolidation of the Islamic Republic of in Iran. The main findings of this research was the followings:1. the eharismatic character of Imam Khomeini was an important agent in solving political criseise. He performed an essential role in the continuation of the Islamic Republic of Iran by state-building, solving of political crisese and approving a series of special rules.2. Islamic Republic Party was stronger than other parties, social forces and classes. This party occupied government sectors, approved political norms and defeated its of coures, opponents. The activities of this party were compatible with Imam Khomeini's thoughts.

By taking into account the fact that, in both Constitutional Revolution and the Islamic Revolution, the reduced power in the central government resulted in significant increase in the number of newspapers, in this paper we perform a content analysis of the editorial articles in the first issues of all new-born newspapers within the two revolutions intervals this period fasted 891 days for the case of the Constitutional Revolution and 614 days for the case of the Islamic Revolution. Using an interpretation of the concept of “value” we investigated the similarities and the dissimilarities of the two revolutions. The results show that in both revolutions, there was an agreement on what was not desired and was considere of actually as a negative value; although there was a significantly higher diversity in the undesired and negative values in the Islamic Revolution compared to the Constitutional Revolution. In other words, there were more focuses on the negative values in the Islamic Revolution in terms of expressing what is not wanted compared to what was actually wanted.We can clearly see more tendencies towards western modernism in the Constitutional Revolution and more aversion from the western modernism in the Islamic Revolution. Also there was more or less an agreement on expressing positive values with respect to the leadership of the revolution in the Islamic Revolution, While there were no individual having the same position in the Constitutional Revolution. There was also an agreement on expressing positive values with respect to knowledge, knowing, knowledgeable people, and expertise in the Constitutional Revolution, while there was mostly an agreement on not expressing positive values with respect to these issues in the Islamic Revolution. There was a strong agreement against not only the King, but also the concept of monarchy in the Islamic Revolution. However, there was only an agreement against the Qajar Dynasty, but not against the monarchy system in the Constitution Revolution. In fact, the ancient kings and their glory were respected by the abased people of Iran at the time of the Constitutional Revolution.

Scientific literature on revolutions can be divided into three parts: Causer, phaseology or processes and internal and external consequences of revolutions. This article focuses on the third part emphasizing the Global impacts of the Islamic Revolution. The effect of the revolution on the Islamic world, is a reality which has been confirmed and supported by theoreticians, writers, researchers and even the political opponents of the reualution.In this article an attempt is made to a conceptual framework for the explanation of this impact by providing four dimensions for the collection of plentiful data in fifty one Moslem states, and Moslem minorities in other countries, and for the theoretical organization of data on the impact of Islamic revolution. In accordance with the findings of this research, four factors namely: the attitude of Iranian society, the attitude and behaviour of the Iranian government and leaders, the and attitude behavior of a given society, and finally, the attitude and behavior of the given government toward the Islamic revolution of Iran affect the influence of the revolution. Certainly, these attitudes and behaviors on both sides (Iran and the countries studied) have been changing over the times.On this basis, first a researcher can obtain a general picture on the impacts. Second, he can recognize the macro- axes of his data- system. Third, he can ascertain the main questions and crucial points of the study in each phases of the research. And fourth, he may use this model of study for conducting a comparative research design within the selected states.

Some revolutions have significant internal political, social, economic and cultural impacts, as well as major regional and international consequences. The Islamic Revolution of Iran, as a major and phenomenal social revolution, has had important internal, regional and international consequences. One of the international outcomes of the Islamic Revolution has been its impact on political and social sciences, especially on theorizing revolutions. In this paper we have focused on the impact of the Islamic Revolution on theories of revolution, in three areas: causes, processes and outcomes of revolutions. Using Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions as our theoretical framework, we hypothesized that: the occurrence of the Islamic Revolution of Iran has had significant theoretical impact on the sociological theories of revolutions. This hypothesis, was broken into three main hypotheses and some sub-hypotheses, and was tested using thematic content analysis. For this purpose, 57 English papers about the Iranian Revolution gathered from international journals were analyzed. The research revealed that the Islamic Revolution of Iran indeed has had significant impact on the theories related to the causes, processes and outcomes of revolutions.

Rent is mainly an economic subject studied by economists. However, it may be interesting for political economists as for its impacts on interactions between government and society and its damaging effects on domestic economy and government's separation and non-reliance on its own society. Calling political rent, the article is to analyze its impacts on the Islamic revolutionary ideals and to find a mechanism to be taken by the I. R. of Iran to clear the destructive effects of this phenomenon on its political area and help its essential ideals to become real. The article is analytically and descriptively investigating the process in the past three decades and tries discussing the cause and effects of political rent based on the approaches of the leader and founder of the Islamic revolution. The author's hypothesis is that prediction of some short-time and long-time requirements in the normative fields of the dominant system, political culture and politico-legal structures may help us eliminate political rent from the society and promote the revolutionary ideals.

This paper attempts to provide an answer to two key questions: 1) In general, what approaches to political change have been pursued by agents of change in different societies? What are the key features of these different approaches to political change? 2) How can one evaluate the political developments in Iran from the viewpoint of ‘revolutionary’ and ‘reformist’ approaches? Construection of ideal-types, library-based research and in-depth interviews have been the main methods employed in this study to categorise the existing approaches to political change and to analyse the political developments in Iran during the past decade. In the first section of this paper, twelve approaches to change is discussed instead of the old threefold categorisation (i.e., revolutionary, conservative and reformist). In the second section, it is argued why the reformist approach is the most effective and realistic way to promote democracy in Iran

The technique of Qualitative Comparative Analysis, which is based on the Boolean algebra or the Boolean expansion of John Stuart Mill's nominal comparison, is the implicit methodology of historical-comparative research. By employing this method, The analysts can evaluate different combinations of explanans as the causes of a single effect. Moreover, the Boolean algebra technique in the historical-comparative analysis is a useful means for the analysis of the data-set with Median N (10 to 50 cases). In the present paper, first of all attempts have been made to describe the main characteristics of the Boolean algebra and its application for the qualitative comparative analysis in social sciences. In the next step, Foran's application of the Boolean analysis or his qualitative comparative analysis in studying the Iranian Revolution has been elucidated. As one of the most outstanding researchers in the field of comparative study of the Iranian Revolution, Foran in his three works has applied Boolean algebra or qualitative comparative analysis to provide answers to various questions. Attempts have been made, in the present article, to comprehensively evaluate the results of Foran's three works from the viewpoint of the Boolean methodology.