Ethnicity and Political Development in Iran

Today, the ethnicity phenomenon and its relation with political development is one of the important concerns of developing societies. In societies without government and axis, ethnic groups and ethnicity play an important role in the ups and downs of the ruling party. The presence of the government-axis phenomenon in the history of Iran has caused the country to have less tribal and ethnic conflicts. However, the governments formed from autocratic thoughts and coup d’état have tried to strengthen their legitimacy through nationality (forced nation building) and create division between ethnic groups. The Pahlavi period was the golden era of ethnicity and nationalist views. Thus, the then government played a major role in restricting the participation of ethnic groups in governmental issues. This is while the occurrence of the Islamic Revolution was a turning point in expedition of political development followed by political participation. In other words, the climate after the Revolution caused the role of ethnic groups in political interaction to attain a social aspect. On this basis, there are two hypothesis about ethnicity and political development in the two different periods, namely before and after the Revolution: 1. Participation of ethnic groups in the political arena had a nationalistic aspect and led to a downward trend in political development. 2. Participation of the ethnic groups after the Revolution had a social nature and led to political development. The hypothesis is that there is a basic relationship between ethnicity and political development. In other words, the main question posed is, what are the effects of ethnicity on the process of political development in form of participation? The answer is, the participation of the ethnicity has a great effect in political development. The period for analysis in this hypothesis includes 1. Pahlavi era; 2. The period after the Islamic Revolution. Therefore, two hypotheses comprise the main idea of the present paper: 1. The nationalistic view before the Revolution led to reduction in political participation. 2. Societal policy for ethnicity caused ethnic groups to grow and develop after the Islamic Revolution.