Historians in the News

The Management would like to call your attention to this article. It's not as bad as it might have been: that's about as far as we're willing to go.

Traditional Governance

I thought I'd put up an actually substantive post. This article in the LA Times about the ambiguities of the Iranian regime has gotten some attention (e.g. Yglesias). The situation it describes is one where political participation is confined to a small minority of the population (they put it at c.15%: clerics, government officials, businessmen, etc.), but within that group authority is very dispersed. Even the nominal Supreme Leader seems to find it essentially impossible to impose needed economic reforms. To a historian of early modern Europe, this all sounds very familiar. That combination of limited coercive authority, powerful vested interests, and an ideology (largely external to the state itself) which allows insiders to criticize but sets very firm limits on debate is characteristic of the old regime: in fact, I would guess, of almost all pre-modern, traditional political orders. I suppose it's not surprising that an anti-modernist regime would recreate that kind of governance. Still, there's a reason why these forms gave way to more formalized and bureaucratic state structures with a largely internal legitimating ideology and a clear chain of command: they perform badly in a world of capitalist economics and industrialized warfare. Apparently, among other things, this paralysis is destroying the Iranian oil industry. Uncle Weber says the veleyat-e-taqlid has gotta go!