UNWANTED LEVIATHAN: THE MODERN IRANIAN STATE AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS

This manuscript examines the modern Iranian state and its evolution, focusing on the theme of the state’s 'unwantedness.' It traces the emergence and evolution of Iran's modern state back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period during which systematic efforts were made to introduce and establish the infrastructures and institutions of the modern state. The manuscript explores the roots of the modern Iranian state's fragility, particularly the factors that have made it vulnerable to grassroots challenges and revolutions. The primary objective of this project is to provide a pathology of the Iranian state by investigating its core issues and the persistence of these problems, despite significant changes in its capacities and control over time. A diachronic analysis of the Iranian state reveals a continuous failure to legitimize its authority and a troubling divide between the state and society, rendering Iran vulnerable to external threats. This divide has led to institutional forms and practices that cause the state to rely on ineffective and costly coercion. This reliance has, in turn, obstructed the transition to democracy, even in the face of strong bottom-up demands for democratic reforms. The manuscript argues that the incongruence between the structure of the state formed during the state-building period and the form of the state demanded by society has had lasting effects on the identity and dynamics of the state in Iran. This discord—a legacy of the defeat of the Constitutional Revolution and the rise of the autocratic Pahlavi state—has become so deeply entrenched that it has persisted even after the 1979 Revolution. Nation-building from above has played a central role in sustaining and reproducing these relationships between the state and society.