Journal of Political Sciences & Public Affairs
Open Access
ISSN: 2332-0761
+44 1300 500008
ISSN: 2332-0761
+44 1300 500008
Research Article - (2022)Volume 10, Issue 2
Political participation refers to the voluntary and free activities of members of a community (both individually and collectively) in governmental and political affairs aimed at directly or indirectly influencing the political decisions of the country. The main purpose of the researcher is to study the cognitive society analysis of the efficiency and effectiveness of the principled and reformist representatives (sixth and seventh parliaments) in the Islamic Consultative Assembly. In this study, using the method of focus groups, the opinion of the members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in the sixth and seventh terms about their performance is examined. And investment support was approved in the sixth parliament, and in the seventh parliament, energy consumption management was emphasized more than anything else.
Political participation refers to the voluntary and free activities of members of a community (both individually and collectively) in governmental and political affairs with the aim of directly or indirectly influencing the political decisions of the country. In the past, political participation only meant successful efforts to influence government actions or the election of leaders. For this reason, some considered political participation to be merely legal actions of citizens, such as voting, demonstrations, and so on. Other definitions of political participation state:
Political participation is the individual-collective activity of members of different levels of the political system and the classification of inclinations and tendencies in order to manage the political affairs of society.
Political participation is a kind of political action that includes any unilateral and multilateral activity of the people in order to participate or be effective in managing affairs and, as a result, the political system. The reality of political participation is, in short, a kind of social action to show the political tendencies and inclinations of the people. Therefore, political scientists have provided vague information about political participation. Because there are different types of social action, one example of which is the latent political participation in the country or region.
Political participation Any voluntary action for or against, organized or unorganized, periodic or continuous, including the use of legitimate or illegitimate methods to influence and select public policies, the administration of public affairs, the election of political leaders at any level It is from local or national government [1].
Iranian society has always been a weak society. The government in Iran has been stronger than the society. In the East, compared to the West, governments have been strong and society has been weak, and one of the reasons why social forces have not gained the necessary power and become independent classes is the unlimited power of the state that has been reproduced in Iranian political culture [2]. In traditional Iranian society, the government was separate from society and not only at the top but also above it. As a result (in the final analysis), the government did not have a strong and continuous base and did not represent the interests of society.
In this way, all social rights are purely monopolized by the state, and the "rights" enjoyed by every individual, group, social class (and even society as a whole) are essentially based on the permission and will of the state, that is, as a "privilege." The government could have canceled it at any time. In other words, the power of the state is not subject to any condition, custom, contract or continuous law, and this is exactly the normal meaning of the word "tyranny", which means: arbitrariness and arbitrariness. In such a society, neither "law" nor "politics" exists in the sense used in the history of European societies. In other words, "law" is the orders and rulings issued by the authoritarian government at will and whenever it wants to change. Gives and "politics" does not go beyond the limits of conspiracy and conspiracy and efforts to eliminate, annihilate rivals and enemies and maintain and protect government dominance over society [3].
Iran's limited experience in partisan activities after the Constitutional Revolution, the relative weakness of select political groups, and the presence of powerful factors that led Iran's political history toward the construction of absolute power changed the course of Iran's development. Consolidation of the construction of absolute power prevented the emergence of parties as channels of political participation and competition. The construction of absolute power is not only based on relations of personal power, but also leads to the deinstitutionalization of politics and the expansion of personal relations and the in formalization of political processes. All of this has put many obstacles in the way of political development. The accumulation of political power in Iran and the concentration of sources of coercion in the hands of the government provided a fertile ground for the restoration of informal politics based on "periods" and hidden and unseen groups. According to the Shah, land reform, women's liberation, and workers' participation in the profits of factories were the only prelude.
Patterns of political development Although they pretend to be universalists and more or less abstractly show the commonalities of all social systems, but at the same time the development experience of non-Western countries is different from the development experience of countries On the other hand, some studies on the development experience of Western countries show that the political development of these valleys has not been subject to a pattern of development. Thus, the experiences gained suggest to us that these phenomena are very diverse due to the circumstances under which they occur. Therefore, it is necessary to go beyond the current stage, beyond the previous universal patterns, to understand the specific development trends in each geographical area, such as the Islamic world, the Middle East, the Asian way of production ... and culture. However, it should be noted that this exclusivism is not limited to the level of cultural differences, but in the case of non-Western countries with a long history of civilization, depending on the type of civilization of that country, it's specificity at the level of civilization. Also shows [4].
Political development is the increase of the capacity and efficiency of a political system in resolving the conflicts of individual and collective interests, the combination of popularness, freedom and fundamental changes in a society. Political development is synonymous with the growth of democracy, and as much as a political system tends from inflexibility to inflexibility, from simplicity to complexity, from pursuit of autonomy, and from dispersion to unity, so does political development. The system is increasing. Political modernization refers more to the establishment of political luxuries, while political development is more behavioral and fundamental. In other words, while political modernization deals with the superstructure aspects of development, political development relates to fundamental transformations. The three factors of organization, efficiency, practical reasoning and ideological solidarity of leaders and followers are considered as tools of political development [5].
Political Development and Civil Society: One of the basic conditions of civil society is the existence and acceptance of pluralism. This principle means accepting pluralism in thought, belief, religion, or any other concept that is seen as the opposite of centralism. In civil society as a whole, political power is sought to be decentralized and distributed in a way that strikes a balance between government and civil society.
Accordingly, civil society has the following pillars
Legitimacy: Law is a set of political, social, cultural and economic requirements that meet the minimum necessary moral standards. Respect for this law and the obligation of human beings to it is one of the most central and fundamental features of civil society, to the extent that some have called civil society a legal society. In fact, it is a desirable society in which there is freedom under the protection of law [6].
Participation: In civil society, people are the center of society and the whole society is governed based on the separation of powers and less government interference in affairs. Therefore, the opinion of the people is the basic verdict and determines the fate of the country. In a participatory political culture, people consider themselves citizens and express and express their views through parties, associations, guilds, groups and the press.
Oversight: The press, parties, and groups play an important role in this dimension of civil society, and while overseeing the government, they can make information about this oversight publicly available to the public to be the primary observer and select The main actors are aware of the government's actions. If we consider three layers for civil society, the monitoring tools that are in the middle layer can transfer the demands and opinions of the lower layer, which is the people, to the upper layer, which is the government.
Interaction of Thoughts and Opinions: Another pillar of civil society is the free expression of opinions, thoughts and ideas that emerge following the acceptance of pluralism, human dignity, tolerance and also human freedom.
The realization of civil society according to the desired approach depends on the creation of a public sphere in the construction of a single political power. From this perspective, the simple construction of the exercise of power has changed from top to bottom, creating three layers in society: the state, the public sphere, and the nation.
Political Development and Participation: Participation can be good or bad, or both, depending on the value that the person wants to value the most and the circumstances of the partnership. Voting can be considered the lowest active level of political participation, as it requires the least commitment and may end as soon as the ballot is cast. In addition, regardless of other restrictions that may exist, voting is inevitably limited by the frequency of elections.
Political participation is one of the examples of the presence of people in determining their own destiny and is one of the most basic forms of social relations and is considered as one of the thematic axes in sociology. The International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences defines political participation as the voluntary activity of members of society in electing leaders and participating directly and indirectly in public policy-making [7]. Lipst has studied the factors influencing participation in various works. He believes that the patterns of participation in elections in countries such as Germany, Sudan, the United States, Norway, Finland and some other countries are similar. In these countries, men participate more in socio-political processes than women, educated more than illiterates. Lipst's variable in explaining political participation can be referred to the economic status of the family, which includes variables such as income level, job, place of residence. According to Lipst, these variables act as basic variables that indirectly affect the political behavior of individuals through some other variables such as political ideology, party membership, etc. [8].
Performance: Efficiency is measured according to the amount of resources used by the individual (in this study, representatives of the sixth and seventh term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly) in their activities. Increasing efficiency means reducing the waste of resources in performing an activity.
Cognitive community analysis of the efficiency and effectiveness of principled and reformist representatives in the Islamic Consultative Assembly is an important issue in terms of political structure and competition, in which the relationship between different variables increases the importance of the issue, which is less considered by researchers. And there are research gaps in this area. The present study is innovative and new in this regard and answers vague questions.
Sixth Assembly of the Islamic Council: The sixth term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Sixth Assembly) was in charge of legislating in Iran from June 28, 2000 to four years. During this period, the reformists held an absolute majority. Fundamentalists, moderates, kalmias, armenians, assyrians and zoroastrians, out of statistics.
Seventh Assembly of the Islamic Council: The elections of the seventh term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly were held in March 2003 with the presence of about 23 million 438 thousand 30 people (about 50% of those eligible to vote). Dealing with economic and social problems, approving the Additional Protocol, trying to join the World Trade Organization, etc. were among the most important issues on the agenda of the parliament after the beginning of this parliamentary term. The speaker of the seventh parliament was Gholam Ali Haddad Adel and its deputies were Mohammad Reza Bahonar and Mohammad Hassan Abu Turabi Fard.
Main question: What effect has the performance of the principled and reformist representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in the sixth and seventh terms had on their organizational efficiency and effectiveness?
Theoretical view of research: In this study, first the electoral system and political structure of Iran are examined and then the cognitive analysis of the efficiency and effectiveness of the principled and reformist representatives in the Islamic Consultative Assembly is examined. This research is applied and the required knowledge related to the electoral system Examines the political development and the efficiency and effectiveness of the representatives in the organization. This research is of descriptive-correlation type because it deals with really existing situations and without the possibility of changing the reality, it describes the conditions of the studied phenomena and generalizes the findings and in In addition to describing reality, it seeks to use relationships in making predictions and establishing relationships, or their absence. In correlation research, the main goal is to determine whether there is a relationship between two or more quantifiable (measurable) variables, and if so, what is its size and extent? An important point to keep in mind is that correlation research never clarifies a cause-and-effect relationship, but merely describes the existence of a relationship. The relationship between two variables is usually expressed as a correlation coefficient, which is a number between zero and one. Two variables that are not related to each other have a coefficient close to zero and two variables that are strongly related to each other have a coefficient close to one. The two variables can be inversely related, in which case the coefficient is negative, the strong inverse correlation coefficient is close to negative one. A negative relationship occurs when two variables are interrelated in such a way that a high score in one is accompanied by a low score in the other and vice versa [6]. Therefore, this research has been done by descriptive-correlation method.
Descriptive research involves a set of methods that aim to describe the conditions or phenomena under study. In the descriptive method, without the intervention and mental inference, the current situation and situation of the phenomenon under study is expressed as it is. Descriptive research is a method of research in which methods are used that aim to describe the situation with the situation under study. In other words, in this research, it has not been possible to interfere and capture the facts in the research community and only the current situation has been studied. One of the advantages of the descriptive method is that it is not possible to estimate or predict the phenomenon under study. Because in this research, after the research, the results of the research are determined and thus any prejudice is avoided, which is why a descriptive method has been chosen to conduct this research.
In this research, the first step to identify data collection is to define the community that should be covered by the research. Statistical population is a set of individuals or units that have at least one common trait. The statistical population of this study is the representatives of the sixth and seventh term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, whose number is 580 people.
In these cases, according to the cost and time available for the research project, a percentage of the population is selected as a sample, of which thirty-nine percent (39%) of the population is a reasonable size sample, therefore, according to the number The representatives of the sixth and seventh sessions of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, which numbered 580 people and constituted the statistical population of this study, 231 people, which is equal to 39.9% of the population, have been calculated using the Cochran sampling formula below. .
In this research, using the method of focus groups, we will examine the views of the members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in the sixth and seventh terms about their performance. Therefore, because the research method in this dissertation is descriptive-survey, after collecting quantitative data, we will use the focus group method to interpret the results obtained from quantitative data. Analyzing Cognitive Society Information on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Conservative and Reformist Representatives in the Islamic Consultative Assembly
In this research, using the method of focus groups, we will examine the views of the members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in the sixth and seventh terms about their performance. In this study, each group will be interviewed separately; In other words, according to the circumstances and situation, it forms several focus groups and conducts the interview. For this purpose, we first select the members of the focal group, which is usually between 6 and 12 people. The questions will be formulated in such a way that the information obtained from the interview is to achieve the purpose of the study. For this purpose, the questions have the following characteristics:
After asking all the questions and discussing them, we will summarize the comments and answers. After complete collection of questionnaires, all information obtained will be examined using descriptive and inferential statistical methods:
Research Findings: Based on the answers given to the questionnaire questions, it was determined that out of 231 sample members who are representatives of the sixth and seventh term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, 213 are male (103 reformists and 10 fundamentalists of the sixth assembly and 99 principals). Are orientalists and 1 reformist of the seventh parliament) and 18 women (9 reformists and 1 fundamentalist of the sixth parliament and 7 fundamentalists and 1 reformist of the seventh parliament) and 10.8% of the sample members are less It is 40 years old, 45.1% are between 41 and 50 years old, 45.1% are between 51 and 60 years old and 44.1% are in the age group of 60 years and above. Also, in terms of education, the highest frequency (66.2%) is related to the bachelor's degree, which shows that the majority of the representatives have a university education. According to the answers, less than 6% have a diploma. On the other hand, the level of public service history shows that less than 8% of people with less than 5 years of experience and more than half of them have a history of 6 to 20 years and specifically 2/44% have 11 to 15 years of service experience, which indicates that the representatives are fully familiar with the issues, problems, as well as the governmental and administrative structure of the country.
Comparison of the performance of the sixth and seventh members of parliament: The independence of the parliament in the legislative dimension is another variable that has been mentioned by all the above-mentioned experts in various forms. Including in Pulsby typology (effective and convertible assemblies), Blandell typology (obedient to free assemblies) and Mazi typology in terms of parliamentary policy power. One of the appropriate indicators for measuring this variable is the legislative performance of the parliament and the other indicator is its supervisory performance. Most of the laws passed by the parliament are based on the bills submitted by the government, and in addition, the vast majority of these bills have been approved. Thus, the parliament has played a more secondary role in reviewing and approving the above bills.
The seventh parliament had the largest number of laws extracted from the bills compared to the sixth parliament.
Meanwhile, the seventh parliament had the highest ratio of laws extracted from projects to all laws compared to the sixth parliament. In contrast, the sixth parliament had the highest ratio of bills to the total number of approved laws compared to the seventh parliament.
These results show that the sixth parliament has played a more subordinate role than the seventh parliament, while the ratio of government bills approved in the sixth parliament is the highest. The sixth parliament also has the highest proportion of agreements.
The analysis in Table 5.3 shows that the number of questions from the ministers in the sixth parliament is a considerable distance from the seventh parliament. On the other hand, the number of impeachments or votes of no confidence cannot be considered a comprehensive indicator of the influence of parliament on the composition of the government; Because some changes in governments are due to political pressure and bargaining by members of parliament or other government institutions. However, the results of this table show that the members of the seventh parliament, during the formation of the cabinet of their term, prevented the success of more of the ministers proposed by the president in getting a vote of confidence. Also, in the sixth parliament, the largest number of investigation cases from the executive and governmental bodies have been raised and opened, and the representatives of this period have used this tool the most. Other notable indicators in the field of parliamentary oversight of the government include the report on the budget appropriation of the Court of Audit and the review of complaints received from the government or other forces in the Parliamentary Commission on Article 90, about which comprehensive and appropriate data are available. did not come.
One of the important variables in Mazi's typology is the level of support of the people and elites for the parliament and Mazi considers it an effective factor in the power of the parliament. The turnout in the parliamentary elections, given the political structure of Iran, can be a good indicator of this variable. While comparing it with the turnout in the presidential election, although somewhat analogous to the difference, but can provide a good perspective on the field of interaction or confrontation between the two.
Another important variable in examining the performance of MPs is the degree of interference of other government institutions in the performance of parliament. Although this variable has been proposed for Western political systems, but in the Iranian political system, due to the multiplicity of governing institutions, the policy is in line with the parliament (the Guardian Council and the Expediency Council are among the most important institutions authorized by the constitution). It is of special importance.
The sixth parliament was formed in a special political and social atmosphere. The elections of the sixth term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly were held during the first government of Seyyed Mohammad Khatami. Prior to the election, our country was experiencing events such as the serial killings, the promotion of the Iranian football team to the 1998 World Cup in France, and the victory over the US national team in these competitions, the formation of the first term of town and village councils. A special feature of the sixth parliamentary elections was that according to a law passed in the fifth parliament, the number of members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly increased from 270 to 290.
The majority of the sixth parliament was held by parties such as Mosharekat, agents and the Mojahedin Organization of the Islamic Revolution. The sixth parliament was in full alignment with the reformist government in terms of political composition, and in terms of legislation and oversight, there was full cooperation between the two, as the highest percentage of approved bills and the lowest ratio of projects to all laws passed in this parliament. In fact, the main goal of this parliament, together with the reform government, was to institutionalize political development (based on the reformists' reading of it) in the country.
Following the events that took place at the end of the sixth parliament, the political atmosphere in the country underwent changes on the eve of the seventh parliament. In addition to the widespread disqualification and resignation of left-wing political activists, the right wing with its lights off, popular figures and revolutionary slogans, and the repetition of slogans approved by the leadership and the body of the people and students that have been the principles of revolution and social justice since the late 1970s. He insisted, they entered the parliament. The seventh parliament, which had the lowest level of popular participation among the studied periods, handed over its presidency to Haddad Adel, the first elected member of Tehran, and Mohammad Reza Bahonar took over the chairmanship of the majority faction.
The performance of the seventh parliament can be analyzed in three parts. The first part coincides with the last year of the eighth government headed by Khatami, during which there was a serious conflict between the seventh parliament and the eighth government. The second part was the alignment of the parliament with the ninth government and the third part was the parliament's alignment with the government in the legislative and supervisory dimensions in a moderate situation.
A comparative study of the economic performance of the sixth and seventh parliaments shows that in the seventh period, inflation and liquidity growth were higher than the sixth, and the law on toll collection and investment protection was approved in the sixth parliament, and in the seventh parliament, energy consumption management. It was emphasized more than anything else.
In general, the sixth parliament was more successful than the seventh parliament because in the elections of the sixth parliament, the scope of popular elections was wider and the number of candidates approved by the Guardian Council increased significantly and people with different tastes and tendencies with scientific and expert backgrounds. They entered the parliament more than the seventh parliament, which was less popular and less popular.
Citation: Habibi A (2022) Cognitive Society Analysis of the Efficiency and Effectiveness of the Principled and Reformist Representatives (Sixth and Seventh Parliaments) in the Islamic Consultative Assembly. J Pol Sci Pub Aff 10: 004.
Received: 18-May-2022 Editor assigned: 20-May-2022 Reviewed: 03-Jun-2022 Revised: 08-Jun-2022 Published: 18-Jun-2022 , DOI: 10.35248/2332-0761.22.10.004
Copyright: © 2022 Habibi A. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.