THE FAILURE OF THE LIBERAL NATIONALIST MOVEMENT IN IRAN, 1949-1979: AN ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURAL CONSTRAINTS AND POLITICAL CHOICES.

摘要

Since the late 1940s the liberal nationalist movement in Iran has had three opportunities to affect the political history of Iran. Each period entailed failure for the movement. This study is designed to investigate the failure of liberal nationalism in Iran.;To answer the above question, this dissertation is organized into two parts. The first part explains the constraints created by the structural characteristics of Iranian society. The second part deals specifically with the characteristics internal to the liberal nationalist movement itself.;The thrust of the argument presented in this study is that a complex interrelation and interplay between the two above sets of characteristics, coupled with global power politics, brought about the defeat of the liberal nationalist movement in Iran.;The important question addressed in this study is whether the failure of Iranian liberal nationalism was exclusively a product of the structural context within which it was operating or was also a product of its own internal characteristics.