The Analysis of the Political Discourse of Dialogic Intellectuals: From Presenting to Criticizing Intra‐discourse

The political thought of Iran can be divided into two parts: the old and the new. The new era of the Iranian polical thought started 150 years ago. During this 150‐year‐old period, Iran has witnessed three strands to its political thought. First, developmentalist political thought, which started with Iranians’ familiarity with the West and lasted until the World War II. That strand to the political thought in that time was mainly concerned with compensation for political retardation, development through constitutionalism and the establishment of a constitutional government. The second was the identitist political thought, which started from the World War II and still continues. This strand is primarily involved in creating the Iranian identity in general and the political identity in particular. The third is the contemporary political thought, which has focused on the issues of tradition and modernity and academic intermixture of the two. This thought was brought up by a group of Iranian intellectuals in the 1370s. The present paper tries to idenfy this new polical thought in Iran.