A Comparative Study of Islamic Revolution of Iran and the Nicaraguan Revolution

The process of formation of each revolution has three stages: historical backgrounds and contexts before the revolution; the revolutionary course and the victory; and finally post-revolution conflicts and stabilization of revolutionary government. Each of these stages has its own economic, social, political and cultural characteristics. In this paper attempts have been made to comparatively study the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the Nicaraguan Revolution. The developments in Nicaragua encompasses the period between 1961 and 1991. In 1961 the Sandinista National Liberation Front was formed and 1999 marks the twentieth year of the victory of the Sandinista revolution. In congruence with the conditions of each stage, based on Crane Brinton's theory the two revolutions have been comparatively studied. The main questions of the present paper are: How far the contexts and conditions of the two societies during the years leading to the victory of revolution are comparable? What were the similarities and differences of the nature of the states, their functions and features of the ruling groups during the revolutionary conditions? How far the pre-revolution sociocultural conditions of these societies are comparable based on the Brinton's theory? What was the nature of post-revolution processes, stages of the revolution, competitions, power shift and performance and nature of ruling group?