Social mobilization made Iran impossible to control via covert intervention

Evidence

These shifts in literacy, education, and urbanization created socially mobilized populations with enhanced capabilities and higher expectations who could be activated for political purposes in ways in which illiterate peasants could not. Socially mobilized societies are more powerful societies. In 1953, when less than 15 percent of Iranians were literate and less than 17 percent urban, Kermit Roosevelt and a few CIA operatives rather easily suppressed an insurgency and restored the Shah to his throne. In 1979, when 50 percent of Iranians were literate and 47 percent lived in cities, no amount of U.S. military power could have kept the Shah on his throne. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 233

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Milgrom social-capital material on how literacy and social structure enable collective action, and to arguments about why some populist revolts succeed where earlier ones failed.