Iran with Natural State (Case Study of Pahlavi II)

The thinkers and theorists in development have proposed various theories on the non-convergent path of development in different societies. In line with this, as one of new institutionalists North studied the transition from Limited Access Order (LAO) (i.e., Natural State) to Open Access Order (OAO) by emphasizing the violence concept. In this paper, it is tried to investigate the institutional barriers to Iran's transition from the Natural State (NS) during the second Pahlavi era; therefore, an analytic narrative is presented about elements such as the official political institutions, formal economic institutions, major domestic superordinates and the rent resources during this period using the Governance Diamond Index (GDI). Hence, this time span is divided into two different periods, namely Fragile Limited Access Order (FLAO) and Basic Limited Access Order (BLAO), and the interaction among ruling coalition members is studied using GDI. Although Iran experienced BLAO in this period, the historical evidence shows the major issue was that this country not only did not move toward OAO, its conditions even led to FLAO and eventually chaos after undergoing a period of BLAO. The results of this study illustrate that the country was exposed to continuous violence due to lack of a coalition among superordinates, the domination of personal relationships over all affairs, and the non-productive distribution of rents under the shadow of increased oil revenues and foreign aid.