The Lack of Historical Struggle and Defeat of Constitutionalism in Iran (Mashroutiat)

The theory of progress of constitutionality(Mashroutiat) which was aptly named “the new threshold” was aimed to lay the basis for constitutionalism by limiting the State. But the constitutionality didn’t last long and “the great misfortune” of the King Reza was formed out of it. Our question in the present research is the reason why all the great hopes of the constitutionalists and the intellectuals ran to waste and the historical reality that brought the country to the verge of destruction convinced the people that a central authoritarian state should be created. The explanation of the failure of the theory of progress is possible through the study of the relation between this era’s thought system, the thought tradition in Iran and the thought of the European Modernity. The fact that what eventually was the end of this thought system of constitutionalism in relation to the historical reality and consequences it had for Iran is the main aim of this article. The theory of progress-modernization in Iran had totally new epistemic foundations in comparison with the traditional “narratives” in Europe tried to constitute the Modernity on the basis of the western thought’s appearances. By reducing “the Metanarrative of Emancipation” in the thought of the European intellectuals they reduced that to freedom from despotism. Trying to find the legitimacy of these new institutions in tradition led to the formation of a returning model of the logic of transformation of the structure of political thought in Iran with which the political events conformed necessarily.