| > Wait a moment, you're equating a change of administration ... with a change of governance In the context of a monarchy, that's the appropriate way to consider it. When Reza Shah Pahlavi took power from the Qajars, the deals with the British remained. There is a level of continuity of governance that exists in the developed West but doesn't exist in the Third World. Ecuador for example was until recently an OPEC nation, but it has had twenty constitutions. However, it is in the nation's best interests, economically speaking, to ensure a peaceful transition of operation across those political perturbations. (I am reminded of software revisions that do not alter the API, so that the software can be treated like a black box and mated to applications without a rewrite of API calls every time revisions are made.) A current example would be Argentina, where the return of Cristina Kirchner to the country's executive branch has spooked foreign investors (including miners and petroleum companies) because she froze the dollar during her presidency about a decade ago. Ultimately this has a very damaging effect on the country's economy and its people's ability to eat. In present-day Argentina, we see economic investment chilled by a new administration that operates under the same constitution but endangers foreign investors. In early-20th-century Iran, we saw economic activity boosted by continuity of international agreements across several different monarchical administrations within two separate dynasties. Please choose the correct lens when you are evaluating a third-world country's economy. What we all learned in social studies class about the differences between regimes, governments, etc.....well it is not necessarily applicable to developing nations where change of administration is frequently carried out by coup or the establishment of a new constitution that is as ephemeral as the previous one. I tried to communicate this succinctly in my earlier post, quoted here: > Are you suggesting that all governmental responsibilities ought to be thrown out the window every time power changes hands? This is not a realistic perspective in most of the third world, where power changes hands frequently and change of government is often established via change of regime. |