Rereading the Development Policies of the Fifth and Sixth Governments of Islamic Republic of Iran and Contrasting them with Developmental Governments Model

This study tried to reread the development policies of Hashemi Rafsanjani’s governments, considering Peter Evans’s communication model of developmental governments. Two main features of developmental governments are reliance on Weberian bureaucracy and the integration of government with civil society. Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis of news headlines of Etela’at Newspaper, as one of the main newspapers of the government from 1989 to 1997 (the eight-year period of the fifth and sixth governments), these features were analyzed. The results showed that over the years, considering the features of a government based on Weberian bureaucracy, a huge portion of interviews, speeches, and news talks of the government are about such issues as human resources development, reforming administrative methods and systems, reforming administrative structures and organizations, and laws and regulations. On the other hand, regarding the integration of the government with the civil society, one cannot find anything about the civil society. The civil society has been replaced with the unorganized groups of people. One cannot find any sign of civil society in this government. The government has relied on people only for the economic development of Iran and for monitoring the administrative reforms. That is, the government has turned to people only to get support and financial aid in order to achieve its economic purposes. According to Evans', this kind of government possesses only one feature of the developmental governments, and has showed somehow incomplete development. Relying only on Weberian bureaucracy and ignoring civil society from 1989 to 1997 make us to see Hashemi’s government a non-developmental government.