Grounded Theory: Obstacles to the Realization of the Paradigm of Good Urban Governance in Iran

Paradigms contain a special view of human beings, defining the correct forms of social relations influencing the world and people, and determining the direction of social development of societies and the specific "way of seeing" the world. Good urban governance has emerged as a political paradigm in the living world today and has provided this way of seeing. Due to the increasing trend of urban population, the Islamic Republic of Iran also faces obstacles to the application of this paradigm. The main question of research addresses the obstacles to the realization of the paradigm of good urban governance in Iran. Using grounded theory through in-depth interviews with 37 elites in Iran selected through purposeful sampling, a paradigm model of obstacles to the realization of good urban governance was identified. 280 basic concepts, 102 subcategories, 21 main categories and one core category were obtained. Obstacles to the urban governance paradigm in Iran can be expressed in three categories: institutional, idea and actors. The institutional category includes absolute government, parochical political culture, particularism, weak urban management, weak civil society, rentier state, reduction of government revenues due to sanctions, heterogeneous influence government, political opportunity structure, politicization, weak laws. The category of ideas includes identity deficiencies, weak a priori state-nation interaction, ideological discourse of sovereignty, lack of urban referential, centralized governance, neo-value orientation, the rule of tradition over Iranian society. The category of actors includes limited actors, coalition building opportunities, irresponsible citizen.