The Nexus of Legitimacy and Performance: The Lessons of the Iranian Revolution

Abstract

A significant aspect of the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 was the lack of awareness about its origins and development on the part of information and policymaking establishments as well as most scholars in the United States. This was the case despite the existence of fairly large diplomatic and intelligence missions and the presence of more than 45,000 Americans, some in highly sensitive positions, in Iran. Consequently, just a year before the Shah fell, the president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, referred to Iran as island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.'I In view of the perceived economic and strategic significance of Iran to the United States, this occurrence must be considered as a classic case of intelligence failure and deserves serious examination of its causes and implications.2 Besides the general bureaucratic pathologies, which are to varying extent present in all fairly complex systems,3 there were two sets of causes for this failure: (1) those emerging from the operation of constellations of interest and (2) those resulting from the structure of concepts. The first set of causes can be explained in part by the nature of the Iranian regime, which encouraged rhetorical, if not actual, support for the Shah by a system of incentives (such as granting favors to panegyrists and penalizing detractors), and in part by the systemic consequences of pluralism in the United States, which encourage the pursuit of short-term interests by individuals and groups while relegating concern with long-term and collective (national) interests to secondary preoccupation. The department of defense, for example, was primarily interested in modernizing and strengthening Iran's armed forces as a bulwark of defense against the Soviet Union and as a lever to maintain stability in the face of perceived revolutionary or radical forces in the Persian Gulf region. The department's personnel were consequently somewhat reluctant to articulate and communicate to decision-making centers any of the basic difficulties of such a closely cooperating ally as the Shah. The diplomatic and intelligence missions were for a long time instructed by their leadership not to contact the opposition or make any reports unfavorable to the regime. Moreover, a number of American scholars and universities had developed close ties with the Shah and his agencies, a development which at times tended to bias orientation. Although the constellation of relevant interests thus contributed to the inability to see the coming revolution, its primary cause was conceptual. The Shah's regime was doing relatively well in the area of performance (that is, production of economic goods and services and of instruments of physical force), where conceptualization is highly developed and empirically well sustained. This area has also constituted the primary concern of the policymakers dealing with the Third World. But the regime was doing poorly in the area of legitimacy, an area which has been difficult to investigate, conceptually less advanced, and