The lack of consensus among the political elites and its effect on the process of political development, distribution of power and the construction of a regular government (from the beginning of the Qajar dynasty to before the constitutional movement

Ghasemiheidari, Susan; Zareei, Mojtaba

doi:10.30465/cps.2025.50203.3455

The lack of consensus among the political elites and its effect on the process of political development, distribution of power and the construction of a regular government (from the beginning of the Qajar dynasty to before the constitutional movement

Document Type : .

Authors

susan ghasemiheidari ¹

mojtaba zareei ²

¹ Department of Political Science, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Madras University, Tehran, Iran

² Department of Political Science, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Tarbiat Madras University, Tehran, Iran

10.30465/cps.2025.50203.3455

Abstract

The school of elitism emphasizes concentration and not dispersion in society. One of the main concerns of the modernist elites, in both intellectual and instrumental forms, was political development as the axis of reform thinking, they considered the modern government as a background for increasing the capacities of the society for development. For this purpose, they wanted to establish a centralized government, bureaucracy and modernize military institutions. From this point of view, in order to achieve this goal, they were following the transition from traditional institutions that hindered development to modern institutions; In this way, to achieve centralization and building a regular government and progress. Therefore, the consensus of the elites was considered a necessity here. Although these goals were not welcomed by the ruling classes such as courtiers, nobles and scholars, or even sometimes by the Qajar kings themselves. The research method in this article was descriptive and analytical. The findings of the research show that political development and the construction of a regular government as the focus of reform thinking at that time, in addition to the structural challenges and the ruling law, within the intellectual elites themselves never had a systematic concept and definition and was not subject to consensus and the components and Its mechanisms were not clear. Therefore, the problem of lack of consensus of opinion and conflict both at the macro level of political forces and among the intellectual and instrumental innovation elites remained in the Qajar era. In fact, the lack of consensus and intellectual conflicts of the elites at the governance level caused weakness in the process of participation and centralization.

Keywords

Qajar

elites

consensus

reforms

bureaucrats

regular government

Subjects