Review by Choice Review
Harris (UCLA) offers a first-rate book on Iran that argues that the politics of social policy and welfare organizations provides a lens through which to understand the surprising dynamics of social and political change in Iran since the 1979 revolution. The core argument is that "the dynamic of state-society relations in Iran runs counter to the standard portrayal of social welfare as authoritarian bribe in the rentier-state paradigm," and "neither ideology nor repression is sufficient to account for the manner in which individuals have organized and acted in the Islamic Republic." The social policies of the post-revolutionary state played a central role in the "consolidation and legitimation" of the nation-state, and "social welfare was a crucial arena" of conflict and restraint among elites. The Pahlavi and the Islamic Republic differed on the scale of elite competition and the role of popular mobilization. The Islamic Republic relied on welfare making as a main source of capacity building and state making; the 1979 revolution and the 1980-88 war with Iraq "acted as critical realignment in the coalitions of domestic groups relied upon by new post-revolutionary political contenders." Harris implies that the new republic contained greater possibilities for democratization than had its predecessor. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Ali Reza Abootalebi, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
