Revolutionary Youths- A study of the Iranian revolution in 1979 in light of the youth bulge theory

Sammanfattning: Demographic changes have created large youth cohorts in many developing countries. These large groups of young people are claimed to increase the risk of political violence according to the youth bulge theory, a theory that has been used to explain the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution in 2011. The paper uses a hypothetical-deductive method to test if the youth bulge theory can be applied as a means to analyse the outbreak of the Iranian revolution in 1979 and thereby offer an alternative to earlier explanations. By using a skewed comparative method, the paper tests if the independent variables; the existence of a youth bulge, grievance and over-urbanization, were present in Iran preceding the revolution. The paper concludes that there existed a youth bulge in Iran, that there were widespread grievances amongst the population and that the country had experienced a rapid urbanization process before the revolution. However, even though the paper concludes that the youth bulge theory can be used to explain the outbreak of the Iranian revolution to a certain extent, the paper does not claim that youth bulges are necessary nor sufficient in initiating revolutions, but rather that they increase the risk of their outbreaks.