A Scoping Review of Original Articles on Public Policy Implementation in Iran

One of the stages of the public policy-making process is the implementation stage, in which policy is implemented in practice. Numerous researches in different types in this field in Iran have been conductedee, but there is no general understanding of what functions these researches have focused on, what is their methodology, and what is the gap of these studies. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to answer these questions. For this purpose, 98 research articles indexed in three valid Iranian databases were reviewed using scoping review methodology. Findings showed that the highest number of articles has been published in the last 5 years. Also, the largest number of articles, i.e. 22 was done in the field of economic policies. Policies such as cyber had a very small share, totally 2 articles. In addition, a significant number of articles have been conducted with the aim of designing an implementation model (26 articles) and barriers to policy implementation (23 articles). The majority of studies have been conducted at the national level (71%) and international perspective and comparative approaches have not received much attention. Also, most of the research was employed qualitative methodology (40 articles) and review methodologies had a small share (13 articles). Finally, based on the existing gaps, suggestions for future research are proposed. As the results, the findings indicate that there are several gaps including, theoretical, like combining cognitive and behavioral sciences with implementation, methodological, such as systematic reviews and critical methodology, and subject area gaps, like cyber policy, in the reviewed articles.