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For decades, political observers and pundits have characterized the Islamic Republic of Iran as an ideologically rigid state on the verge of collapse, exclusively connected to a narrow social base. In A Social Revolution, Kevan Harris convincingly demonstrates how they are wrong. Previous studies ignore the forceful consequences of three decades of social change following the 1979 revolution. Today, more people in the country are connected to welfare and social policy institutions than to any other form of state organization. In fact, much of Iran's current political turbulence is the result of the success of these social welfare programs, which have created newly educated and mobilized social classes advocating for change. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Iran, Harris shows how the revolutionary regime endured through the expansion of health, education, and aid programs that have both embedded the state in everyday life and empowered its challengers. This focus on the social policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran opens a new line of inquiry into the study of welfare states in countries where they are often overlooked or ignored

"For decades, political observers and pundits have characterized the Islamic Republic of Iran as an ideologically rigid state on the verge of collapse, exclusively connected to a narrow social base. In A Social Revolution, Kevan Harris convincingly demonstrates how they are wrong. Previous studies ignore the forceful consequences of three decades of social change following the 1979 revolution. Today, more people in the country are connected to welfare and social policy institutions than to any other form of state organization. In fact, much of Iran's current political turbulence is the result of the success of these social welfare programs, which have created newly educated and mobilized social classes advocating for change. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Iran between 2006 and 2011, Harris shows how the revolutionary regime endured though the expansion of health, education, and aid programs that have both embedded the state in everyday life and empowered its challengers. This first serious book on the social policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran opens a new line of inquiry into the study of welfare states in countries where they are often overlooked or ignored"--Provided by publisher

In the historiography of Iran, capitalism is commonly evoked as a "concept of difference." By this, I mean that the term is regularly used to characterize socioeconomic phenomena as modern versus traditional, leading versus laggard, foreign versus indigenous, or hero versus villain in an assumed direction of history. As Jürgen Kocka remarked when coining the phrase, most definitions of capitalism since the nineteenth century have been used by intellectuals to distinguish experiences of their own time from either the past or the future. And it is in terms of this rhetorical function that its significance and limitations for Iranian historiography can be analyzed.

The Trump administration's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and its reimposition of US sanctions put the Iranian economy back into a stranglehold and discredited the reformists led by President Hassan Rouhani who had secured the deal. With the country already reeling from the US sanctions, the COVID-19 pandemic has delivered a heavy blow. As political factions mobilize for the 2021 elections, the situation is more unpredictable than ever.

The coronavirus has taken a heavy toll in Iran, which was already reeling from the return of US sanctions. As factions trade blame, ordinary Iranians suffer.

The latest political realignment in the Islamic Republic resulted in détente with the West even as regional upheaval has drawn Tehran into overextended military interventions. While Iran's future is uncertain, it is definitely not a hegemon in the making.

Within a year of becoming president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad had already confused much of the world. Explanations of his political ascent in a semi-peripheral country rely largely on the concept of charismatic authority. This is a non-explanation, however, as the charismatic historical figure who seemingly holds creative command over the social world also has to be created. Instead, I argue that Ahmadinezhad's trajectory from an Islamist engineering student to the presidency of a post-revolutionary state highlights three mechanisms of social-political innovation that are bounded by space and time: the situated overlap of social capital, the paradox of vertical clientage, and the breakaway of the machine boss. These mechanisms are usually misread as timeless signifiers of national backwardness or as charismatic dei ex machina. By showing these mechanisms at work through biography, we can challenge scholarly and popular explanations of social change that implicitly rehash modernization theory.

Within a year of becoming president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad had already confused much of the world. Explanations of his political ascent in a semi-peripheral country rely largely on the concept of charismatic authority. This is a non-explanation, however, as the charismatic historical figure who seemingly holds creative command over the social world also has to be created. Instead, I argue that Ahmadinezhad's trajectory from an Islamist engineering student to the presidency of a post-revolutionary state highlights three mechanisms of social-political innovation that are bounded by space and time: the situated overlap of social capital, the paradox of vertical clientage, and the breakaway of the machine boss. These mechanisms are usually misread as timeless signifiers of national backwardness or as charismatic dei ex machina. By showing these mechanisms at work through biography, we can challenge scholarly and popular explanations of social change that implicitly rehash modernization theory.