Neoliberalism and state formation in Iran

Abstract

Stemming from the exceptionalist understanding of the 1979 revolution and/or relying on the key political and economic characteristics of the rentier state theory, most explanations of the Iranian post-revolutionary state privilege national space and downgrade capitalism as a totalizing unity. In contrast, this article defines the state as a set of institutional forms reflective of social relations that are generated from contestations over the processes of capital accumulation, arguing that these national social relations have been constituted through their interaction with global social relations. Accordingly, by documenting a conspicuous institutional reorganization of the Iranian state since the late 1980s, it contends that this transformation is the consequence of the reconfiguration of the class basis of the state. The article maintains that this class reconfiguration is internally related to the process of Iranian neoliberalization which has been spawned as a result of the interaction of global and local dynamics.