A study on the nature of rural management in Iran

This article examines the evolution and underlying nature of rural management in Iran across the pre- and post-revolutionary periods. A major part of the process of rural change has occurred via planned changes accompanied with the government initiatives. The core of the initiatives was rural management. The purpose of this article is to investigate the evolution rural management and its nature. Based on the two dominant perspectives in the literature, it seeks to understand whether the changes in rural management followed a developmental goal or did the goal of controlling rural areas and maintaining the existing rural order. For this purpose, the development of rural management was studied, in two periods, including before and after the land reforms and after the revolution, by using available sources and documents. The article concludes that the government-directed changes regarding rural management has, had remarkable impact, so that we can say that today the villages have access to basic services and modern life facilities more than in the past,, however this does not mean that all villages benefited equally from these changes.. Consequently, the underdevelopment of the country's rural areas remained as an unsolved problem. Meanwhile, the government managed to gradually develop its influence and control in the villages through various (developmental) bureaucracies. Hence, the, the very government has been the main beneficiary of rural management developments over the decades of rural interventions.



Introduction

In developing societies, the vertical and horizontal integration of local communities, including the rural ones, in the broader (national) society was often pursued through planned changes along with the creation of communicational infrastructures and bureaucracies. In rural society, this was reflected in the in the change of rural management by the government. Apparently, the goal of all initiatives was to speed up the process of development including development of villages. However, to what extent these government interventions have been accompanied by rural development in practice, is the subject of the present study? Given the fact that, although the research in the rural field is notable, but mostly are limited to a specific period of history and program, therefore, for a more comprehensive understanding of the subject, it tries to fill some existing gaps by examining the evolutionary process of rural management, and especially to this subject.



Research method

This study investigates the evolution of rural governance and its nature before and after the revolution. Therefore, the general approach of this article can be historical and the method used is to analyze the trend in the context of historical developments by using library and documentary data. So, based on available literature, the research data has been analyzed before and after the revolution. The data and documents are those that are either written by researchers or official reports and occasionally studies that have been conducted and published by researchers, institutions or related organizations. As a result, in order to investigate the evolution of rural governance, documents available in published works, including books, articles, researches, laws, regulations and approvals concerned to village administration, have been used as the basis for review and analysis.



Results and discussion

Based on the historical developments, three periods can be distinguished. The first period includes right before the land reforms, which provides a historical perspective of the evolution of the rural society from the traditional form to the modern era. Before the land reforms, the dominant the owners controlled the economic and rural social life. According to some scholars, including Katouzian (1973), it was the "social root of the authoritarian governance. According to Farazmand, many administrative reforms were from the 19th century was formed according to the unity of the interests of the monarchy and owners, without making fundamental reforms in villages. During this period, Kodkhoda represented the government and the lord entity in villages. The second period begins with land reforms providing a significant basis for government penetration in the village through various official agents under the supervision of different ministries. Contrary to some scholars such as Halliday (1979), these reforms were successful in achieving political goals, but failed to provide favorable social and economic conditions. The findings are more in agreement with researchers such as Katoozian, that these measures did not change rural poverty. The third period is concerned to the post-revolution era, which was affected by the revolution atmosphere, characterizing a reactive natured initiatives towards the pre-revolutionary measures, which was reflected in the broad demands for fundamental changes in the administrative and political system of the country. This period experienced the tendencies of bureaucratization, bureaucratization, and proliferation of often parallel and occasionally unsustainable bureaucracies, which has also been arisen in the field of rural management.

Generally, it should be said that there has been no significant change in any of developmental issues. Classic poverty indicators show no radical changes occurred in village life (Shakoori, 2019). Limited environmental capacity one low investment levels , rural-urban differentials still exists, indicating that rural measures condemned to be ineffective (Mahdavi, 2017: 142).



Conclusion

Rural governance refers to organizing rural material and human resources effectively often by the by the government. Regarding two main approaches on the relationship between the government and the bureaucracy, this study concludes that what continued/realized as consequence of various rural interventions (via programs and reforms) was the control and influence of the government in the village. As result, this study confirmed that the critical approach prevailed in practice in rural developments in Iran, particularly in rural governance realm and so, the main beneficiary of rural reforms was the government itself.