TITLE: REVOLUTION AND CONSTITUTIONALISM IN THE OTTOMAN
EMPIRE AND IRAN
PUBLISHER: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LINK: http://is.gd/dIQBDF RELEASE TYPE: RETAIL
FORMAT: PDF RELEASE DATE: 2015.01.17
ISBN: 9781107458901 STORE DATE: 2014
SAVED.MONEY: 30 DOLLAR DISKCOUNT: 01 x 05MB
AUTHOR: NADER SOHRABI

BOOK

As a wave of democratic social movements, under the influence of
"velvet" revolutions, is sweeping the Middle East, this book
calls attention to an earlier wave that swept the region a
century ago. In his book on constitutional revolutions in the
Ottoman Empire and Iran, Nader Sohrabi considers global diffusion
of institutions and ideas, their regional and local networking
and the long-term consequences for adaptation to local
exigencies. There are lessons to be learned here. The
revolutions, despite the differing social structures of the
societies in which they happened, shared the same objectives and
demands. Furthermore, the suddenness and simultaneity of their
appearance point to a commonality that transcended the
localities. Arguing that revolutions are time-bound phenomena
whose forms follow global models in vogue at particular
historical junctures, the book challenges the ahistorical and
purely local understanding of them. Furthermore, it provides a
strong case that macrostructural preconditions alone cannot
explain the occurrence of revolutions; rather, global waves
intervention of agency, and additional contingent events work
together to bring them about in competition with other possible
outcomes. Beyond concern for how and why revolutions happen, the
book offers a comparative account of the process of
institutionalizing constitutionalism in two settings. The
comparison highlights many similarities in the powers struggles
including the paradox inherent in the "constitutional
revolutions." Comparison also affords exploration of a key
difference: the reason for greater resilience of democratic
institutions in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey in contrast
to Iran. In making his case, Sohrabi draws on a wide array of
archival and primary sources that afford a minute look at the
revolutions as they unfold