The Political Economy of Rentrism and Privatization in Iran after the Islamic Revolution

An important issue on which the political and economic experts and the public have recently focused is the failure of privatization and failure to transfer governmental property to the private sector (the public) and extensive transfer of national property to the sector so-called quasi-government. A review on the privatization process in Iran, after 30 years, indicates that after years of struggling to cut the government's hand in the economics, not only people own no large corporations, but the government is also excluded from running them and a powerful sector, i.e. quasi-government has been formed along with the public and private sectors. Using theoretical-analytic method and according to the theory of "violence and social order" by Douglas North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry Winga, which is based on the conscious distribution of rent among elites in a restricted order, the present study aims at finding an answer to this question what caused diversion of privatization and transfer of government property that is considered national capital to the quasi-government sector (public non-governmental and military institutions). In this sense, it can be said that in the restricted order, the dominant coalition to control social order and prevent the dissatisfaction of the core members of power have to grant political and economic privileges (rent) to these members. In this context, the transfer of property to sectors that are neither public nor private in Iran is based on this trend.