The Role of Public Participation in Enacting Municipal Regulation: A Comparative Study of Western and Iranian Laws

The right to self-determination can have different dimensions including in the local area and in the role which citizens can take in local-municipal regulations. This research discusses the mechanisms of citizen participation in the regulatory process in terms of local councils and, through employing comparative studies, expresses distinct examples and models of this participation. Despite the good experiences of leading countries in this area as to engaging citizens in the regulatory process, the results of the research demonstrate that, although there is a possibility of a general deduction of this participation from the upstream legal documents, there are no mechanisms for participating in local regulations or they are very weak and scarce in Iran. The impossibility of systematic and rational participation of citizens in regulation can be one of the most important causes of ineffectiveness and lack of willingness to obey municipal regulations and increase in the economic and social costs of implementing city councils' decisions.