Analyzing Iran's Development Plans from the Viewpoint of Social Planning Factors

The occurrence of negative impacts of economic growth led the intellectuals and policy-makers to consider sustainable development in mid-1970s. Meanwhile, social issues and themes influenced the methods, goals and domain of planning in the midst of a paradigm shift in the area development policy-making. Iran enjoys a background of over 60 years in the area of development planning during which 11 plans were devised. These plans were based on the models and theories that reflect both the external conditions and backgrounds as well as the viewpoints of the policy-makers on the subject of development. Therefore, review and analysis of such plans may help to sketch the theoretical trend of development in Iran. This article tries to survey the methods, goals and domain of development planning in Iran. Who were the activists, taking roles in development planning? To what extent did the environmental factors affect the contents of the development plans? What was the share of social areas such as education, health, housing, welfare and social security in the plans? To answer these questions, the laws and regulations related to development plans before and after the Islamic Revolution of Iran (1988) were reviewed with thematic content analysis using extended Easten black box. According to the findings, background variables of policy-making environment critically affect essential and structural variables. The results indicate that planning in Iran are not socialized from the methods and formulation point of view; meanwhile, social goals have not been considered as the tools of growth or as the tools to reduce negative impacts of economic growth-based policies.