In Iran, the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah deeply influenced the country's economic, political, and social life. Everything either began or ended with the state. The state was the most important institution in the country and enjoyed a significant monopoly in political and economic decision-making, trade, etc. It enjoyed autonomy from social pressures and pursued its own policies, whilst controlling political groups. Therefore, to analyse the function and behaviour of the state and the economic development of the country, I have used a political economy approach. To this end, a model has been constructed to describe the political structure of the Iranian state and to map the country's political and economic development. It has been argued that: 1. The political structure of the regime was authoritarian-bureaucratic, based on the three pillars of the state bureaucracy, the security machinery and the armed forces, and the network of court patronage. A parallel to this structure can be seen in the Safavid dynasty whose pillars of power were the same.2 The decision-making process and exercise of power was manipulated by, and depended upon, the Shah and the ruling elite. This manipulation depended substantially on the degree of state autonomy from social and economic groups.3. The state acted as the engine of economic growth and the main source of capital accumulation. Thus, the political system became the main economic decision-making body who dictated economic policies for more than the market. In spite of this direction, the state never questioned the essence of private capital accumulation.4. Oil revenues, both by increasing the magnitude of resources at the disposal of the state and by easing structural constraints, substantially increased the capacity of the state to intervene in economy and society to pursue its own policies, and5. Oil revenues provided a new kind of economy, built on rent and heavily reliant on the export of a single raw material, the production of which required little contact with the rest of the economy. It brought spectacular growth, yet at the same time engendered dependency on volatile markets. In the long run oil also created new international interdependencies as the state relied on foreign markets for capital, labour, and goods. Furthermore, Iran had no independent technological capacity and had to import semi finished goods to meet its industrial needs. Therefore, a process of 'dependent development' was shaped during the 1960s and 1970s.

Through innovative and expansive research, Oil Revolution analyzes the tensions faced and networks created by anti-colonial oil elites during the age of decolonization following World War II. This new community of elites stretched across Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, and Libya. First through their western educations and then in the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, these elites transformed the global oil industry. Their transnational work began in the early 1950s and culminated in the 1973–4 energy crisis and in the 1974 declaration of a New International Economic Order in the United Nations. Christopher R. W. Dietrich examines how these elites brokered and balanced their ambitions via access to oil, the most important natural resource of the modern era.

Why were urban women veiled in the early 1900s, unveiled from 1936 to 1979, and reveiled after the 1979 revolution? This question forms the basis of Hamideh Sedghi's original and unprecedented contribution to politics and Middle Eastern studies. Using primary and secondary sources, Sedghi offers new knowledge on women's agency in relation to state power. In this rigorous analysis she places contention over women at the centre of the political struggle between secular and religious forces and demonstrates that control over women's identities, sexuality, and labor has been central to the consolidation of state power. Sedghi links politics and culture with economics to present an integrated analysis of the private and public lives of different classes of women and their modes of resistance to state power.

Offers new and cutting-edge research on the role of drugs in Iranian society and government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

From the 1940s to 1960s, Iran developed into the world's first 'petro-state', where oil represented the bulk of state revenue and supported an industrializing economy, expanding middle class, and powerful administrative and military apparatus. Drawing on both American and Iranian sources, Gregory Brew outlines how the Pahlavi petro-state emerged from a confluence of forces – some global, some local. He shows how the shah's particular form of oil-based authoritarianism evolved from interactions with American developmentalists, Pahlavi technocrats, and major oil companies, all against the looming backdrop of the United States' Cold War policy and the coup d'etat of August 1953. By placing oil at the centre of the Cold War narrative, Brew contextualises Iran's pro-Western alignment and slide into petrolic authoritarianism. Synthesising a wide range of sources and research methods, this book demonstrates that the Pahlavi petro-state was not born, but made, and not solely by the Pahlavi shah.

Examines how the Iranian Revolution became a showdown between the ideas and values of Islam and those of the West and how it recast the face of the Middle East.

While intensive cooperation between China and the EU in the fields of energy use and environmental protection is needed, the question remains unanswered how this cooperation could be organized. This book puts the geopolitical implementation of energy security into the context of geo-economic systems in a global scale.

"In many ways, everything we once knew about energy resources and technologies has been impacted by: the longstanding scientific consensus on climate change and related support for renewable energy; the affordability of extraction of unconventional fuels; increasing demand for energy resources by middle- and low-income nations; new regional and global stakeholders; fossil fuel discoveries and emerging renewable technologies; awareness of (trans)local politics; and rising interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the need for energy justice. Research on these and related topics now appears frequently in social science academic journals-in broad-based journals, such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and Review of International Political Economy, as well as those focused specifically on energy (e.g., Energy Research & Social Science and Energy Policy), the environment (Global Environmental Politics), natural resources (Resources Policy), and extractive industries (Extractive Industries and Society). The Oxford Handbook of Energy Politics synthesizes and aggregates this substantively diverse literature to provide insights into, and a foundation for teaching and research on, critical energy issues primarily in the areas of international relations and comparative politics. Its primary goals are to further develop the energy politics scholarship and community, and generate sophisticated new work that will benefit a variety of scholars working on energy issues"--