Khomeini's Theory of Islamic State and the Making of the Iranian Revolution 1 Mehdi Shadmehr2 1I wish to thank Hassan Ansari, Charles Cameron, Jose Cheibub, Amaney Jamal, Ali Kadivar, Mehran Kamrava, Charles Kurzman, Paulina Marek, Charles Ragin, Kris Ramsay and seminar par- ticipants at the University of Rochester and the University of South Carolina, and MPSA Conference for helpful suggestions and comments. 2Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. E-mail:
[email protected]. Phone: (305) 747-5896. Abstract The Iranian Revolution is one of the most influential events of the late twentieth century, with far-reaching consequences that still echo through the rise of Islamic state. Drawing from both primary (interviews, autobiographies, documents, and data) and secondary sources, the paper shows that Khomeini's the doctrine of the Guardianship of the Jurist played a decisive role in the making of the Iranian Revolution by changing the goals and strategies of the religious opposition from reforming government policies to establishing an Islamic state. Khomeini's doctrine was first published in 1970 in his treatise, Islamic State. The paper argues that Khomeini's ideological innovation can account for the sharp contrast between the outcomes of widespread protests in the early 1960s and the late 1970s: they both shook the Pahlavi regime, but the former protests dissipated, while the latter culminated in the Iranian Revolution. Expanding the scope beyond Iran and Islam, the paper explores the role of ideological innovations in the Russian and American Revolutions, and discusses the potentially critical role of ideological innovations in democracy movements in Islamic countries. The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations..