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261 Pedro Luis Rubio Terés The iranian elites as perceived from their society and… means of state control45, as Schumpeter acknowledged in his account of electoral yield46. If this dissociation has economic grounds (as it was the case of the Shah, where the elites ostentatious way of life diverged from that of the impoverished majority) it is necessary to question whether these types of renovations provide the space for the infiltration of the lower social strata. In a general basis, Pareto affirms that «the governing elites are gradually replaced by families that come from the lower classes47 that belong to the non-elite»48. In Iran, this process is not uniquely attached to the times of the Islamic Revolution, as it is in fact the case with recent «populist» elites from the conservative faction49 such as Ahmadineyad50. In spite of the fact that subversive movements are generally intended to end the aristocratic tendencies of the ‘old regime’ and bring social justice instead, the very men who «proclaim its suppression» are often absorbed by that same political behavior trying to monopolize power51. Likewise, Mosca maintains that, much as the renewal «is likely to prevail in unsettled times52», this process can be triggered by new manners of thinking (not necessarily revolutionary) undermining the social foundations. These include the discovery of 45  The economic, political and military institutions usually constitute the elite in more or less equal terms, but this is unlikely to be the case in Iran where all powers are ultimately subjected to the religious one. In that sense, the traditional pluralist approach of the capitalist state in which relatively autonomous economic organizations coexist under a common administration is better adapted for the IRI as the range of organizations able to comply with the moral requirements of the state. 46  MEDEARIS, John. Major conservative and libertarian Thinkers: Joseph A. Schumpeter, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, p. 108. 47  Rakel asserts that ever since Weber, the terms «status», «occupational position» and «socio-economic background» have gradually replaced the notion of «class» in classic political theory, underscoring the multidimensional nature of it. 48  RAKEL, Eva. The Iranian political elite, state and society relations, and foreign relations since the Islamic revolution, University of Amsterdam, 2008, p. 32. 49  Namely from the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), with «many senior officers holding personal and family ties to the political elite» (RAKEL, EVA. «The Political Elite in the Islamic Republic of Iran: From Khomeini to Ahmadinejad», Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 29 (1), 2009, p. 110). 50  The development of this permeability can be paralleled to Kuhn’s scientific paradigms, whether it occurs only during revolutionary times with a dramatic change of political paradigm, or it also takes place gradually in normal times. 51  The elite theorist Robert Michels described this process as the «inevitability of the oligarchy». MICHELS, Robert. A sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy, New York: The Free Press, 1968, p. 7. 52  MOSCA, G., op. cit., p. 415. http://revista.ieee.es

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