Regeneration of Subsidies Reduction Policy under Dominant Paradigm

There has been lots of heated debates going on in Iran about the subsidy reduction policy after the revolution 1979. This policy, however, has remained in the center of attention, even though lots of socio-economical events has happened since then and most of the political actors have changed. The goal of this research is to study the changes of the paradigm in the past four decades and also the approaches taken by parliament and state back in the time. The policy paradigm developed by Hall (1993) is the main theory of this research. The current method is quantitative and concentrated on Islamic parliament negotiations in 10 terms. The results show that the paradigm is dominant, having four elements. Some policy ideas have been developed under the influence of this paradigm. Among lots of criticism that this paradigm has received, only the one seeking to develop a Comprehensive System of Social Security and Welfare was successful. This idea, however, failed to get institutionalized. The results suggest that in order to change the policy, more authority is needed than the Plan and Budget Organization’s, which is in charge of governing the dominant paradigm.