Mohammad Ali Kadivar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Studies. His work contributes to political and comparative-historical sociology by exploring the interaction between protest movements and democratization. His work contributes to political and comparative-historical sociology by exploring the causes, dynamics, and consequences of protest movements. This work grows out of his experience as a participant-observer of the pro-democracy movement in Iran, but his research agenda moves outward from this case to explore these issues on a global scale, using case studies, comparative-historical methods, and statistical analyses. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and earned a MA and BA in political science from University of Tehran in Iran. From 2016 to 2018, Kadivar was a postdoctoral fellow at Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Kadivar’s research has been published in the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Comparative Politics, Socius, Mobilization, and Sociology of Development. His work has won awards from the Collective Behavior and Social Movement (CBSM), Comparative Historical Sociology, Global and Transnational Sociology, Sociology of Development, and Peace, War and Social Conflict sections of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Kadivar's first book is forthcoming in 2022 with Princeton University Press. He has also published analyses of Iranian politics for public audiences in English and Farsi in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, and BBC Persian.
How did Iran’s revolution of 1978-79 and the war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988 affect levels of income inequality levels in the country? Would income inequality have developed differently in Iran if the revolution and war had never occurred? And how significant were the effects of the revolution and war in reducing income inequality? This column reports new research findings on these questions.