Monograph comprising a case study of the financing of private sector industrial enterprise in Iran, Islamic Republic to illustrate financial policy considerations in developing countries - examines the industrial background in respect of economic development, industrial growth, government policies, etc., discusses foreign investment, banking, development banking, etc., and includes two case studies and recommendations in respect of interest rate policy, international borrowing, etc. Bibliography pp. 259 to 264, references and statistical tables.
The relationship between religion and the state has entered a new phase ever since the Iranian Revolution more than three decades ago. The recent mass uprisings against autocratic rulers in the Arab world have highlighted the potency of Islamist forces in post-revolutionary societies in the region, a force arguably unlocked first by Iran’s version of the ‘spring’ three decades ago. The economic ramifications of these uprisings are of special interest at a time when the possibility of the creation of Islamic states can have implications for their economic policy and performance again. A study of the Iranian experience in itself can offer rare insights whether for its own features and characteristics or for its possible lessons and implications for recent events in the region. This book is concerned with the economic aspects and consequences of the Iranian Revolution in general and its interaction with the international economy in particular. Many studies have to date dealt with Iran’s economic challenges, policies and performance in the post-revolutionary period but its interaction with the international economy – although of growing importance – has not received sufficient attention. The contributions in this volume by experts in the field address ways in which in the span of three decades, Iran’s economy has evolved from a strong aspiration to develop an ‘independent economy’ to grappling with debilitating international economic sanctions.
This book focuses on Iran to explore the question of how the nature of industrial organizations and the whole system they constitute can exert a great influence on an industry’s competitiveness and resilience. The author examines what happens if firms and companies participating in the manufacturing and distribution process of a certain product are not organized to a high degree and operate independently. The book begins with an inquiry into the historical environment of Iran’s apparel industry, which has never been stable. It then reveals the specific practices that enable firms to maintain their independent business, and argues that the elastic state of the production and distribution system has worked for the survival of self-reliant member firms. The typical Iranian apparel firm persists in maintaining independent operations regardless of its size, a practice that is inimical to the development of long-lasting business relations with other firms as well as to vertical integration between firms, in all stages from production to distribution. A distinguishing feature of Iran’s apparel industry is that the member firms are barely organized compared with their counterparts in advanced industrialized countries. Despite such a weakly organized system, generally small-scale but self-reliant Iranian firms courageously persist in the face of the market’s difficulties. Superficially, it appears that Iran’s apparel market is being filled with Chinese goods, but the reality is somewhat different. Apparel firms that are currently doing business with China but are ready to terminate it at any time are taking advantage of newly emerging opportunities to ensure the survival of their own businesses. Reopening those businesses for domestic operations remains an ever-present possibility for them.
After detailed discussions of the economy's basic sectors, major national economic trends, and the government's economic policies, the author offers an assessment of the economy's overall performance against the regime's initial agenda. The final chapters discuss the extent of the dilemma confronting the government.
An examination of the problems of economic growth and structural change in oil-exploring economies which focuses on the experience of Iran. The author argues that oil income can make a substantial contribution to industrial growth, subject to the adoption of appropriate policy measures.
Originally completed mere months before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Fred Halliday’s study of twentieth-century Iran was not only incredibly timely but a deeply researched, thought-provoking work. It masterfully surveys the country’s uneven capitalist development, state-building and class structure, security and military apparatus, dissent and opposition movements, and foreign relations. Even decades later it remains among the most sophisticated and compelling analyses of this period of Iranian history. Halliday persuasively argues against crude interpretations of the Pahlavi regime as an enlightened and modernising monarchy or merely a dependent client state. Instead, he contends that to make sense of the Pahlavi regime and its vulnerabilities, it is crucial to understand the dialectic of dictatorship, development and the imperial geopolitics of the global Cold War. This new edition also includes six of Halliday’s essays on the Islamic Republic, demonstrating how his thinking on Iran and the revolution evolved over time.
In the past twenty-five years Iran has experienced a revolution and a turbulent postrevolutionary period under an Islamic state that declared itself the government of the oppressed while it struggled to establish a utopian Islamic economy. In this pioneering work Farhad Nomani and Sohrab Behdad provide a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of change and class configuration in Iranian society. Using an empirical framework, they map the trajectory of class changes over time, specifically noting the movements between prerevolutionary and postrevolutionary Iran. A centerpiece of the book is its analysis of the changes in the pattern of employment of women in the postrevolutionary period. Despite its conceptual and quantitative approach, the book is written in a clear and lucid style, making it accessible to a wide audience. The authors provide a fresh look into Iranian society by exploring the changes in its essential underlying economic structure, and in doing so, they lay the foundation for comparative studies of the social hierarchy of labor in other Middle Eastern countries.
This book traces the patterns of capital accumulation and the changes in class and state formation emanating from it in Iran during the global neoliberal era. It demonstrates how there are inner connections between the nature of contemporary development in Iran, the form of the state, the ongoing sociopolitical transformations in society and the geopolitical tensions with the West. Simultaneously, it highlights that these issues should be explored in terms of their internal relations to the motions and tendencies of neoliberal global capitalism and resulting geopolitics. Accordingly, the book demonstrates that Iranian neoliberalisation has brought about new contested class dynamics that have fundamentally reconstructed the Iranian ruling class, aggressively shaped and reshaped the working class and the poor, and drastically impacted the state form and its foreign policy.
Iran is a country with a deep and complex history. Over several thousand years, Iran has been the source of numerous creative contributions to the spiritual and literary world, and the site of many remarkable manifestations of material culture. The special place that Iran has come to hold in contemporary historical events, most recently as a center stage actor in the unfolding and interconnected drama of worldwide nuclear arms proliferation and terrorism, is all the more reason to explore the characters and personality of Iran and Iranians. The A to Z of Iran is designed to give the reader a quick and understandable overview of specific events, movements, people, political and social groups, places, and trends. Through its extensive chronology, introduction, bibliography, appendixes, and more than double the number of cross-referenced dictionary entries as in the previous edition, the work allows for considerable exploration of a number of historical and contemporary topics and issues. In particular, the modern period, defined as 1800-present, is covered extensively.
Thematically, this book problematizes Iranian official nationalism. It reviews how every modern Iranian regime since the constitutional revolution of the 1905-06 has failed to legitimize its official identity, resulting in the fall of five different regimes. The book details how the collapse of each regime resulted in the interruption of the official meaning of being Iranian, as well as the meanings of its enemies. What remained the same was how every Iranian regime represented itself as the agent of a particular national desire defined in terms of making Iran to become sovereign, developed, democratic, and constitutional. Nonetheless, no regime was able to convince a great majority of the people that it achieved what it represented. This book makes three specific contributions. The first contribution is pedagogical. By focusing on the dynamics of regime changes, it provides a heuristic model for identifying challenges that all Iranian regimes have faced. Moreover, the book is a comprehensive review of the disruptive, oppressive, and bloody nature of the rise and fall of different regimes. The second contribution is theoretical. Rather than examining the behavior of various Iranian regimes in isolation from their international context, the book examines how each regime got to understand itself in relations to its imperial others. By examining the governmental rationality of each regime, the book offers a better theoretical framework for understanding political development not only in Iran, but also in all other Middle Eastern and South Asian states. Finally, the third contribution of this book is its critical approach to the main body of the literature on Iran, modernity, development, democracy, and constitutionalism.
