The Interaction Between The Central And Local Governments In Iran From The 19th Century To The 20th Century

Iran has a long history of autocratic monarchy and centralization.The central government’s ruling mode over the local government has experienced complex changes.In the history of Iran,when the country was strong,it was highly centralized.When the country was weak,the central government was relatively weak.In ancient times,the local administrative divisions in Iran changed from the provincial system of the Persian Empire to the enfeoffment system of the Parthian Empire,and then to the quadripartition system of the Sassanian Empire.The ruling mode changed from centralization to decentralization,and then to centralization.During the middle ages of Iran,the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula stepped on the historical stage of the Middle East and included Iran in the territory of the Arab Empire.The Arab Empire practiced provincial system.After the 11 th century,the religious,political and demographic composition of Iran was deeply changed by the conquest of the Seljuks and the western expedition of Mongolia.Tribes have become an important element in Iran’s political life.Until modern times,tribes have played an important role in Iran’s central local relations.At the end of the 15 th century,the Safavids unified Iran.The Safavid Dynasty declared Shiite Islam as the state religion and began to implement the centralized policy.Since then,the game between secular power and religious power,and the game between central power and local power have become two major themes in Iranian history.In the early 19 th century,the Qajar dynasty ruled Iran and followed the centralized system of autocratic monarchy.The king,known as the "king of kings",has supreme political status and almost unlimited ruling power.At the beginning of the Qajar Dynasty,powerful centralized politics was not established,and local governors and tribal leaders had great power.Therefore,the central government carried out a series of reforms to gradually strengthen centralized politics,but this process changed in the late Qajar Dynasty.In the second half of the 19 th century,the Qajar Dynasty was impacted by the west,and the structure of traditional Iranian countries began to disintegrate.The king’s control over society gradually weakened,the centrifugal tendency of the local government was gradually strengthened,and the interaction between the central government and the local government also changed accordingly.The Iranian Revolution started in 1905 greatly weakened the power of Qajar central government,and many local tribal warlords completely separated from the central government.Taking 1905 as the node,the relationship between the central government and the local government of the Qajar Dynasty can be divided into two periods.In the early stage,centralized power was implemented,and the central power was superior to the local power.In the later period,from 1905 to the end of the kagar Dynasty,the central power was weakened,the traditional order collapsed,and the local provinces showed an increasingly strong trend of separation and autonomy.In the first half of the 20 th century,with military power in hand,Riza Khan stepped on the political stage of Iran and established the Pahlavi Dynasty.The establishment of the Pahlavi Dynasty marks the birth of Iran’s modern nation-state.During the reign of Riza Khan,professional bureaucrats infiltrated the national territory,and Iran first appeared a multi-level local management system.This is the first time in modern Iran that the state power went beyond the scope of the capital Teheran and appeared in the cities and villages of other provinces.The interaction between the central and local governments in Iran has undergone a great change,from the old indirect contact mode with Iranian historical characteristics to the direct communication mode in which the central government brings the local governments under the cover of state power.Iran is no longer a patchwork of scattered power entities,but a centralized modern country as a whole.The two kings of the Pahlavi Dynasty were committed to curbing the local centrifugal tendency and separatist forces,trying to consolidate the power of the central government and ensure that the authority of the central government was not challenged by any illegal power center in the country.The control of the central government over the local areas has reached an unprecedented peak.During this period,the traditional local forces,which served as the link between the state and the local people for a long time in Iranian history,lost their living space due to the extensive expansion of state power.The monopoly of the powerful families in Iran on the local administrative positions has been broken,and the reputation and appeal have been eroded with the development of time.They eventually disappeared in Iran’s modern history.After the Islamic revolution in 1979,the Islamic Republic of Iran was founded.With the development of the times,the rough and backward administrative divisions gradually can not keep up with the needs of the local economic and political development of modern Iran.Since the 1980 s,the administrative divisions of Iran have been adjusted and reformed one after another.The layout of provincial administrative divisions reflects the relationship between the central and local governments in Iran.Every adjustment of provincial administrative divisions is an adjustment of the relationship between the central and local governments.In 1993,the city of Ardabil in Iran was upgraded to a provincial administrative division,which is a typical example of the relationship between the central and local governments in Iran at the end of the 20 th century.In this movement in 1993,Ardabil city proposed to the central government the desire to upgrade to a province through various legal channels,and the central government made a positive response considering the local geographical location,economic and political development and other factors.With the completion of the legal process,the city of Ardabil eventually became Ardabil province.This whole interactive process reveals to us the new positive interactive relationship between the central and local governments in modern Iran.At the end of the20 th century,Iran’s centralized policy was firmly implemented.The central government of the Islamic Republic,which pursues the modern political model,is determined to maintain the unity of the country and the stability of social order.At the same time,the central government of Iran respects the reasonable expression of local interests.On the premise of consistent national identity,local governments have demands,objections and legitimate struggles,while the central government has concerns,concessions and certain compromises.Generally speaking,from the beginning of the 19 th century to the end of the 20 th century,Iran experienced three different historical periods,and the interaction between the central and local governments in Iran also experienced three stages of development.The evolution of the relationship between the central government and the local government shows obvious stage characteristics,from the central government’s indirect rule of the local government relying on the unstable intermediary in the Qajar Dynasty to the central power’s suppression of the local power in the Pahlavi Dynasty,and then to the benign interaction between the central government and the local government in the Islamic Republic.From the 19 th century to the 20 th century,the central government’s control over the local government,the attitude of the local government towards the central government,and the distribution of power between the central government and the local government are all important aspects of understanding Iran’s modern history.The evolution of the relationship between the central and local governments is the epitome of the social and political changes in Iran in the past two hundred years,and it is also the result of the continuous game between the central and local powers.The study of it is helpful for contemporary people to understand the construction of modern Iranian nation-state.