 | Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook Subjects: Iran -- Politics and government -- 1979–1997; Iran -- Politics and government -- 1997–; Elite (Social sciences) -- Political activity -- Iran; Politicians -- Iran; The 1979 revolution fundamentally altered Iran's political landscape as a generation of inexperienced clerics who did not hail from the ranks of the upper class--and were not tainted by association with the old regime--came to power. The actions and intentions of these truculent new leaders and their lay allies caused major international concern. Meanwhile, Iran's domestic and foreign policy and its nuclear program have loomed large in daily news coverage. Despite global consternation, however, our knowledge about Iran's political elite remains skeletal. Nearly four decades after the clergy became the state elite par excellence, there has been no empirical study of the recruitment, composition, and circulation of the Iranian ruling members after 1979. Mehrzad Boroujerdi is O'Hanley Faculty Scholar and professor of political science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, and former president of the International Society for Iranian Studies. He is the author of Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism and editor of Mirror for the Muslim Prince: Islam and the Theory of Statecraft. |
