Prologue: In search of a national covenant. -- Constitutional trial and error. -- Pahlavist absolutism. -- Restoration of parliamentary politics. -- The trajectories of monarchism. -- Revolution: chronicle of an implosion. -- The edifice and emplacements of royal rule. -- Elective affinities: Western imperial interests and authoritarian monarchy. -- The architecture of royalist hegemony. -- A culture of confrontation. -- The unfolding of clerical rule: oligarchy by divine right? -- The culture of politics; the presence and absence of the past. -- Predicaments and prospects. -- Epilogue: the resilience of modernity.

1. Iran -- Politics and government -- 20th century
2. Democracy -- Iran