Political Developments In Post-Khomeini Iran

Based on the Maxist historical materialism which stresses on the relationship between the history and reality, theory and practice, the dissertation focuses on the studies of Iran's political developments since the death of Khomeini, who was the first religious leader of Islamic Republic of Iran. As far as the method, borrowing some valuable theories from the western political science, the author adopts the "the Review of Civilization Exchange", proposed by Peng Shuzhi who is a professor of Nothwest University in China, as one of the main instructing theories. By terms of Iran's political system emerging under the context of Islamic civilization, the dissertation attempts to take Iran as a case study to probe the democratization and modernization in the Middle East by discussing the relationship between religion and state, tradition and modernity, revolution and evolution in post-Khomeini Iran.The first chapter concentrates on the comparative research of theories of the political development proposed by western and eastern scholars. The dissertation defines the research method and scope in this part by the analysis of Islam, politics and developments. The second chapter considers the Islamic Revolution as the starting point of the research, analyzing its compacts on political system, national policy-making, ideology and domestic disputes brought by the revolution, In the third and fourth chapters, the respectively political reform in Rafsanjani and Khatami's presidencies are the main tasks, which include the comparison of both the strong and weak points. The fifth and sixth chapters summarize the characteristics of Iran's political developments and the factors that have influenced and will still influence Iran's politics. In the last chapter, the author proposes the main research points which are important for Iranian studies.On the basis of the research above, the dissertation makes a conclusion: (i)In Iran's political evolution, the Faqih system, as the core of political regime, is the focus of the domestic disputes. (ii) Demanding of democracy and modernity from the civil society provides the motivation and driving force for the governmental reform and also brings about some unstable factors. (iii) In post-Khomeini Iran, the trend of reform is inevitable as facing some challenges. (iv) The relationship between ban and America and the Greater Middle Eastern Initiative challenge the process of Iran 's democrazation and modernization.