CONTRADICTIONS OF GROWTH/REDISTRIBUTION POLICIES IN POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

In this paper, we propose a new model for the political economy of Iran. In the shadow of coexistence of modern and traditional institutions in Iran, we have had complex relationship between politics and economy, especially after revolution, so that the political economy could not been explained only by a single casualty model such as rentier state or oil despotism. In Iran, due to the existence of oil and gas resources and their revenues, we face with a special economic structure named Dutch disease in the microstructure of economy. But the more important is the political consequences of this rent in the financial structure of the state that led it to a rentier state. But, Iranian state is not a pure rentier one. The combination of these conditions and features make the government not to show the required rationality in economic crisis and could not reconcile between different requirements of production (economic rationality) and distribution (political legitimacy). Therefore, after a period of careful and conservative policies, we witness the governments entrap by the populistic macro-economic policies. At these conditions, regular recommendations of economic science including polio-financial regulations could not solve the problem. Therefore, economic crisis do not find practical solutions and they will be aggregated and deepened. The explanation of this problem is only possible in a systemic approach named Crisis Model.