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Pahlavism

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Pahlavism
پهلوی‌گرایی
FoundersReza Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Ideology
Political positionRight-wing
Colors  Blue

Pahlavism (Persian: پهلوی‌گرایی, romanized: Pahlavi-gerāyi) is an Iranian nationalist and monarchist ideology associated with the rule of the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran (1925–1979). It combined state-led modernization,[32] Iranian nationalism emphasizing the country's pre-Islamic past,[33] and a strong centralized state. It is also considered a case of liberal autocracy.[34] While often characterized as pro-Western, scholars note that in its later phase the ideology incorporated increasing emphasis on cultural authenticity and elements of state anti-Western rhetoric.[35]

History

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Origins

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Under Reza Shah, Pahlavism consisted in practical reforms rather than a clearly articulated ideology. Amin Banani noted in 1959 (after Reza Shah's death):

Unlike Kemal Ataturk, whose reforms he emulated freely, [Reza Shah] made no public utterances, wrote no articles, left no testaments the total of which could be considered his program or the ideological core of his revolution. We cannot speak of Pahlavism as we do of Kemalism.[36]

However, during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the monarchy sought to develop a more codified ideological structure. Pahlavism emerged as a distinct framework, particularly accelerating after the 1953 coup. Unlike traditional rule, it sought to transform the crown into a modernizing institution capable of competing with communist, socialist, and Islamist ideologies.[37]

According to Zhand Shakibi, this development moved the monarchy from being a guarantor of stability to a "revolutionary" force during the White Revolution.[38] The ideology was built upon the concept of the "King-Philosopher," where the Shah was presented as both a political leader and an intellectual guide, rooted in the ancient Iranian idea of farr-e izadi (divine glory).[39][40]

Core pillars

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Shakibi identifies several fundamental pillars that defined Pahlavism as a modern ideological school:[41]

  • Archaism and Nationalism: The ideology emphasized Iran's pre-Islamic heritage, particularly the Achaemenid Empire, to create a national identity independent of Islamic clerical influence. This was exemplified by the 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire in 1971.[42]
  • Statist Modernization: Pahlavism promoted the idea that only a powerful monarchy could act as the primary agent of socio-economic change and propel Iran into the "Great Civilization."[43]
  • Secularism: While not explicitly anti-religious, it sought to marginalize the political power of the Ulama by promoting the state as the sole source of law and social guidance.[44]

Symbolism and cultural policy

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A key element of Pahlavism was the use of historical symbolism to reinforce national pride. This included the promotion of pre-Islamic Persian architecture and the controversial 1976 adoption of the Imperial calendar (Taqvim-e Shahanshahi), which dated the Iranian year from the coronation of Cyrus the Great rather than the Hijra.[45]

According to Shakibi, these cultural policies were designed to bypass the Islamic period of Iranian history and create a direct link between the modern Pahlavi state and the ancient Persian empires. This "secular nationalism" was disseminated through the education system and state-controlled media to foster a new generation of Iranians loyal to the monarchical-modernist ideal.[46]

The Resurgence Party and failure

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In 1975, the ideological development reached its peak with the establishment of the Rastakhiz Party, which Mohammad Reza Pahlavi envisioned as the sole vehicle for Pahlavism. The party was intended to achieve ideological and political unity, requiring all Iranians to participate in its structures.[47] During this period, the ideology was further codified through the publication of the Shah's books, such as "Toward the Great Civilization", which outlined a future for Iran as a leading industrial power.[48]

However, Shakibi notes that Pahlavism failed to maintain mass support. The ideology remained a "top-down" construct that did not address the shifting social and economic realities of the late 1970s. The excessive focus on the monarch's persona and the exclusion of alternative political voices eventually contributed to the collapse of the state during the Iranian Revolution.[49]

Development under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

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Under Reza Shah's son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Pahlavism evolved into a more visible ideology. During the later decades of his reign, it was expressed through royal ceremonies, such as his belated coronation and the 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire, and the establishment of the Rastakhiz Party as a single party.[50]

During this period, the Shah modified state discourse in response to growing societal and intellectual criticism of Pahlavi Westernization. These adjustments emphasized Iranian cultural authenticity and contributed to the incorporation of anti-Western rhetoric into the state's official ideology.[35]

Pahlavism was ultimately displaced following the Iranian Revolution, which established a new political order fundamentally opposed to the Pahlavi monarchy.

Characteristics

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In its modernist orientation, Pahlavism has been compared to the Kemalism of Turkey, the Baathism of Syria and Iraq, and the more recent Heydarism of the Republic of Azerbaijan.[51]

According to M. Hakan Yavuz, "secular-authoritarian ideologies associated with Kemalism, Pahlavism, and Baathism elided the more pluralist forms of Islamic revival and reform".[52]

Quoting Zhand Shakibi, "Pahlavism professed the importance of the 1906 Constitution but did not advocate the type of free elections characterizing the West's liberal democracies."[53]

Relationship with the West

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Pahlavism initially embraced Western models of state-building, legal reform, and modernization. However, particularly during the later reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, state discourse increasingly emphasized cultural authenticity and resistance to perceived Western cultural domination, incorporating elements of state-led anti-Western rhetoric, as a reaction to increasing social and intellectual criticism of Pahlavi Westernization.[35]

Organizations

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Before 1979

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After 1979

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These are asylum groups and have been banned from Islamic Republic of Iran, which antagonizes Pahlavism.

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ Ashraf, Ahmad (30 March 2012). "IRANIAN IDENTITY iv. 19TH-20TH CENTURIES". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. XIII, Fasc. 5, pp. 522-530. Similar to the common pattern of the early 20th century, the Pahlavi nation-state was founded on self-glorification. Celebration and commemoration of the collective historical memory through symbols and myths, rituals and ceremonies, museums and archeological sites, Achaemenid architectural design for public edifices, nationalistic music, and a national dress code became its hallmarks.
  2. ↑ Ghods, M. Reza (January 1991). "Iranian Nationalism and Reza Shah". Middle Eastern Studies. 27 (1). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 35–45. doi:10.1080/00263209108700845. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 4283413.
  3. ↑ Asadian, Reza (19 December 2023). "The roots and evolution of Iranian nationalism and its historiography". Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 10 (1) 971. Palgrave. doi:10.1057/s41599-023-02317-2. ISSN 2662-9992.
  4. ↑ [1][2][3]
  5. ↑ Steele, Robert (May 2021). "Crowning the "Sun of the Aryans": Mohammad Reza Shah's Coronation and Monarchical Spectacle in Pahlavi Iran". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 53 (2): 175–193. doi:10.1017/S002074382000121X. ISSN 0020-7438.
  6. ↑ Shakibi, Zhand (March 2013). "Pahlavīsm: The Ideologization of Monarchy in Iran". Politics, Religion & Ideology. 14 (1). Routledge: 114–135. doi:10.1080/21567689.2012.751911. ISSN 2156-7689.
  7. ↑ Schayegh, Cyrus (November 2018). "Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's Autocracy: Governmental Constraints, 1960s–1970s". Iranian Studies. 51 (6): 889–904. doi:10.1080/00210862.2018.1522949. ISSN 0021-0862.
  8. ↑ Amini, Parvin Merat (January 2002). "A Single Party State in Iran, 1975-78: The Rastakhiz Party: The Final Attempt by the Shah to Consolidate His Political Base". Middle Eastern Studies. 38 (1). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 131–168. doi:10.1080/714004438. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 4284214.
  9. ↑ "Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of Iran's last shah, at centre of protest chants". BBC News. 9 January 2026. Archived from the original on 28 July 2026.
  10. ↑ [5][6][7][8][9]
  11. ↑ Banuazizi, Ali (June 2021), "The Crossing Paths of Religion and Nationalism in Contemporary Iran", When Politics are Sacralized: Comparative Perspectives on Religious Claims and Nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 247–272, doi:10.1017/9781108768191.011, ISBN 978-1-108-48786-3{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  12. ↑ Alinejad, Mahmoud (January 2022), "The Rivalry Between Secular and Religious Nationalisms: On the Split in Iranian National Identity", The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic Perspectives, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 273–300, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-85580-2_11, ISBN 978-3-030-85580-2{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  13. ↑ Pahlavi, Reza; Cook, Steven A. (3 October 2025). "A Conversation With Reza Pahlavi". Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 10 June 2026.
  14. ↑ [11][12][13]
  15. ↑ Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza (1980). Answer to History. New York: Stein and Day. p. 145. ISBN 978-0-8128-2755-2.
  16. ↑ Jahanpour, Farhang (April 1984). "Iran: The Rise and Fall of the Tudeh Party". The World Today. 40 (4). Royal Institute of International Affairs: 152–159. ISSN 0043-9134. JSTOR 40395600.
  17. ↑ Ghods, M. Reza (October 1990). "The Iranian Communist Movement under Reza Shah". Middle Eastern Studies. 26 (4). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 506–513. doi:10.1080/00263209008700833. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 4283395.
  18. ↑ Gasiorowski, Mark J. (August 2019). "U.S. Perceptions of the Communist Threat in Iran during the Mossadegh Era". Journal of Cold War Studies. 21 (3): 185–221. doi:10.1162/jcws_a_00898. ISSN 1520-3972.
  19. ↑ [15][16][17][18]
  20. ↑ Zarrinnal, Navid (October 2024). "From The Creators of Knowledge to the Specialists of Spirit: Anti-Clericalism in Iran's Modernist Intellectual Discourse (1925–1941)". Harvard Theological Review. 117 (4): 820–836. doi:10.1017/S001781602400035X. ISSN 0017-8160.
  21. ↑ Gashniani, Yunos Kojuri; Dolatabadi, Ali Bagheri; Fattahizadeh, Abouzar (January 2024). "The Role of the Clergy in the Establishment and Consolidation of Pahlavi I (1925–1941)". Iranian Studies. 57 (1): 143–163. doi:10.1017/irn.2023.53. ISSN 0021-0862.
  22. ↑ Toosi, Nahal (24 February 2026). "Why Iranians Are Increasingly Willing to Settle for Reza Pahlavi". Politico.
  23. ↑ [20][21][22]
  24. ↑ Young, T. Cuyler (January 1948). "The Problem of Westernization in Modern Iran". Middle East Journal. 2 (1). Middle East Institute: 47–59. ISSN 0026-3141. JSTOR 4321943.
  25. ↑ Faghfoory, Mohammad H. (1993). "The Impact of Modernization on the Ulama in Iran, 1925–1941". Iranian Studies. 26 (3–4): 277–312. doi:10.1080/00210869308701803. ISSN 0021-0862.
  26. ↑ Blow, David (June 2010). "From Islamic Small Town to Westernised Metropolis: The Development of Tehran under the Qajars and the Pahlavis". The Court Historian. 15 (1). Routledge: 1–17. doi:10.1179/cou.2010.15.1.001. ISSN 1462-9712.
  27. ↑ Shakibi, Zhand (April 2018). "The Rastakhiz Party and Pahlavism: the beginnings of state anti-Westernism in Iran". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 45 (2). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 251–268. doi:10.1080/13530194.2016.1246242. ISSN 1353-0194. JSTOR 48541228.
  28. ↑ [24][25][26][27]
  29. ↑ Shannon, Matthew K. (September 2015). "American–Iranian Alliances: International Education, Modernization, and Human Rights during the Pahlavi Era". Diplomatic History. 39 (4): 661–688. doi:10.1093/dh/dhu019. ISSN 0145-2096.
  30. ↑ Sanjian, Ara (April 1997). "The Formulation of the Baghdad Pact". Middle Eastern Studies. 33 (2). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 226–266. doi:10.1080/00263209708701153. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 4283868.
  31. ↑ [29][30]
  32. ↑ Pullapilly 1980, p. 117: "Modernization was pervasive in the ideology of the state in the Middle East, whether it be Arab Socialism, Pahlavism, or Ataturk's Etatism."
  33. ↑ Journal of International Affairs. Vol. 35. 1981. p. 195. Certainly, the attempts by the Shah to generate intermediate institutions of legitimation in the post-1960 period were a failure; the Majlis and the parties in it were phantoms, and neither Pahlavism, as a national ideology stressing the pre-Islamic past, nor authoritarian concepts of farmandari or 'commandism' were widely accepted.
  34. ↑ Morton H. Halperin; Michael Hochman Fuchs (2009). The Survival and the Success of Liberty: A Democracy Agenda for U.S. Foreign Policy. Century Foundation Press. p. 82. [...] For the next twenty-five years, the United States supported the shah as he stifled political participation and civil society in a sort of liberal autocracy that did not appear so liberal to many of the Iranian people.
  35. 1 2 3 Shakibi 2018, abstract. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2018 (help)
  36. ↑ Banani 1959, p. 69.
  37. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 115. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  38. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 117. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  39. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 118. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  40. ↑ Pahlavi 1961, p. 54.
  41. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 121. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  42. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 122–123. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  43. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 125. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  44. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 128. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  45. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 123. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  46. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 124. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  47. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 129. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  48. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 131. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  49. ↑ Shakibi 2013, p. 134. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShakibi2013 (help)
  50. ↑ Randjbar-Daemi, Siavush (2016). "Looking Back at Mashrutih: Late Pahlavi Narratives on the Constitutional Revolution". Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and Narratives of the Enlightenment. Gingko. pp. 223–238. ISBN 978-1-909942-91-2. JSTOR j.ctt1m3p32s.13. Through a concerted and wide-ranging effort, which featured the Shah's progressive encroachment on the political sphere, the effort to create an all-encompassing political ideology known as 'Pahlavism', the adoption of frequent national celebrations, including his own belated coronation and the Persepolis celebrations which culminated with the establishment of the Rastakhiz single party, the Shah re-established the monarch as the driving and pivotal force in the Iranian state system.
  51. ↑ The New Geopolitics of the South Caucasus. 2017. p. 42. Like Kemalism in Turkey, Pahlavism in monarchical Iran, and the Third World's postcolonial emancipatory movements, such as Baathism in Syria and Iraq, Heydarism is modernist.
  52. ↑ Yavuz 2013, p. 4.
  53. ↑ Shakibi 2019, p. 146.

Sources

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Further reading

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