Institutional Relations between State and Society in Pre-Modernized Iran (Criticizing the Theory of Historical Gap Between the State and the Nation in Iran and Providing an Alternative View)

In most socio-historical studies, the gap between the state and the nation has been introduced as a historical and inherent feature of the traditional Iranian society. This means that the state's lack of external legitimacy, as well as the lack of procedures that determine the rights and duties of the state and society, have led to the alienation of social forces and the state of each other, and the historical gap between state and society. Hence the only relationship between these two was the exercise of unilateral domination by the state over society and obedience and subordination of society to the state. Referring to the historical institutionalism approach and using Reactive sequences analysis, this article provides an alternative narrative of the relation between state and nation. In this narrative, on the contrary, to the theory of the historical gap between the state and the nation, the mutual needs of the state and social forces led to a specific institutional configuration in the Iranian society, that was based on a complex network of interactions between the four main institutions of central government, the clergy, tribes and the market, resulting in relatively stable institutional balance between these institutions. This institutional configuration was rooted in a series of Reactive sequences, which brought about the formation of the Safavid government based on numerous tribal and ideological foundations.