The Interaction between Economic Strategy and Foreign Policy in Contemporary Iran

The goal of this paper is to study the impact of underdevelopment and inefficiency of political parties in assisting to the formation of political underdevelopment in Pahlavi era. In this paper، political development is understood as people’s participation in political activities and political under development is understood as the lack of such situation. It is believed that such participation will be achieved through independent and public political parties and، in turn، the activities of such parties are directly related to the type of dominant political system in the society. In such circumstances، in democratic systems the grounds are laid for parties’ activities and subsequently the participation of individuals in society for political activities is encouraged. On the other hand، however، in authoritarian systems the participation of individuals are refused through governments’ suppression of independent political parties and the formation of formal ones. On that ground، Mohammad Reza shah government can be categorized into the second group of political systems. This political system generally is the major hindrance to the formation of political development as defined previously. A day after military coup d etat on 19 August 1953 through preventing the development and growth of activities of independent parties and their suppressing and forming puppet and formal parties، the king could refuse the active participation of people in political processes. And subsequently، he could change the country’s political stage to a place for roleplaying of unofficial relations and groups. This situation finally contributed to the occurrence of the legitimacy crisis and fall of this regime in 1979.