The Challenges of the Oppositionalism of the Social Science Societies in Iran and its Impact on Political Development

Scientific associations of social sciences, as independent, self-governing, civil society organizations, grew exponentially over the last two decades. According to the statistics, up to 400 scientific associations can be counted. While the expansion of civil society is regarded as an indicator of the political development process, in the Iranian society , the expansion of scientific associations, especially social science associations, faces the challenge of "oppositionism" and "oppositionalism", and despite the position of scientific authority of scientific associations, government chooses The policy of "neglect" and "lack of recognition" towards them.  This research, by choosing three Iranian scientific associations include Political Science Association, Iran's sociology Association and Iranian Peace Studies scientific associations , and it uses the qualitative method through an interview with activists of associations and using bibliographic methods . The most important finding of the study is to show the gap between an ideal model and the actual model of the interactions of associative institutions in the state, and misunderstanding of the state about the critical function of the social sciences associations.