THE HİSTORİCAL SOCİOLOGY OF NATİONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNİNG İN IRAN: IDEOLOGY, RENT AND CONTİNGENCİES MATTER

Abstract

Despite more than six decades of national development planning, Iran suffers from different economic shortcomings. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the underlying reasons for setbacks and shortcomings in the national development planning in Iran. Studies devoted to analyzing the idea of development planning and economic setbacks in Iran can be categorized into two groups: the first group consists of studies that use tools of mainstream economics to understand causal relationships between variables while the second group involves scholarships that try to understand the role of country’s historical, social and political dynamics in the economic outcomes. This study adopts the historical sociology approach, to analyze the ideas put forth by the second group of scholars who have taken special dynamics of Iranian society into account. To this end, I examined the evolution of ideas developed by the second group of scholars. Moreover, I exploited statistics published by the Central Bank of Iran and Statistical Center of Iran to investigate the degree to which the ideas of the second group can explain the outcomes and shortcomings of the development plans implemented in Iran. The results of the study show that they diagnosed a lack of pragmatism, oil rents, and weak institutional conditions as the reasons for failure in development planning in Iran. These intertwined variables are constituent forces and outcomes of an economic ecosystem that have resisted long-term planning rationales. The study concludes that any social development that enhances inclusiveness in society through giving voice to outsiders along with improvement in the rules of the democratic game can promote social welfare as the most important target of a multidimensional development plan.