The Relationship between Government and Society & Its Effect on Modernization and Development in the Pahlavi Era

The Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), made purposeful efforts to modernize Iran by government and social forces. Researches that have been usually done in this regard have mainly emphasized on the role of the government and oil revenues in the development process. Although the role of government institutions cannot be denied, developmental social forces also played an important positive role in this process. The relationship between the government and social forces, and the role of this relationship in advancing modernization in the Pahlavi era is the main question of this article.we believe Pahlavi as a strong developmental state could attract the cooperation of social forces that supported development, especially the intellectuals, the new middle class and bureaucrats.and could curb the social forces who were against development, and succeeded in advancing development . But at the end of Pahlavi's life, the gap between these social forces and the government led to the fall of the government and the halting of the development process.The theoretical framework of this article was formed by the critical look to Leftwich Developmental State theory. The article’s data have also been collected and analyzed in a documentary-library form.