Institutional Configuration of Regional Federalism Under the Discourse of Tribal Political Management in Iran During Qajar Era

Michel Foucault is one of the thinkers who, by proposing concepts such as paleontology, genealogy, episteme, the relationship between knowledge and power, and especially the concept of "governmentality", has attracted the many thinker’s attention, including in the field of political geography. This concept was first proposed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in 1978 and it includes the study of techniques, processes and approaches in the framework of which governments control all aspects of citizens' lives. In this regard, one of the subject areas that can be studied in the framework of governance concept; Knowing how to construct the political management of space is affected by the role-playing of government discourses. In some of the political ideas about government in Iran; Such as patrimonialism, oriental tyranny, Asian production method and elitism, has been tried to formulate a set of generalized meta-narratives about the construction of territorial political management model in Iran’s political geography. Some other thinkers consider the functional changes of social classes such as capital accumulation pattern or social and cultural factors to be cause of changing the political management patterns of the territory in this period. However, one of the important aspects of political management is to examine the centralization or distribution of authority among social-regional institutions in territory in accordance with the functioning of government's discourses. In this regard, in the Qajar era, there is a different pattern of limiting and expanding the authorities of the government and social forces in relation with each other at the territory scale which was a function of social forces articulation pattern under the tribal management discourse. 

In this regard, in the theoretical part, have been defined the discursive dimensions of political territorial management in the framework of Foucault's view of governmentality. Then, it has been analyzed how the social-regional institutions are articulated with the central government in Qajar era Iran under the tribal discourse rule.

A- Regulating the relations of tribes with Qajar state under the tribal discourseThe military organization of the Qajar era was increasingly dependent on tribes and nomads and during the war, the Qajar kings issued orders and asked the tribal leaders to gather the required army. Due to the limitation of central government's sovereignty in tribal territories; taxes collection was also the responsibility of tribe’s chiefs, and the central government could only collect the taxes of different regions with tribe’s cooperation.B- Distribution of political power based on earning money from land ownership The Qajar government, by handing over the income rights of agricultural lands to local landowners, caused the distribution of political power to become the dominant model in the governance system. political management of pasture lands was largely handed over to tribal leaders. these regional leaders were able to become the undisputed regional power by dominating the lands in the ecological geography of their tribe's habitat.C- Regional-political interactions pattern of urban capitalists with the governmentIn the Qajar era, due to the supremacy of tribal discourse, regular transportation routes were not developed to expand commercial exchanges between cities and regions, and the weak commercial connection between cities prevented the urban capitalistclass from forming national unions. with formation of this discourse; an inescapable idea formed among the city dwellers of the Qajar era that the need to defend their lives and livelihoods is not possible without the support of the regional military leaders. With the formation of this discourse; An inescapable idea formed among the city dwellers that need to defend their lives and livelihoods is not possible without support of regional military leaders. For this reason, the microphysics of the power of the urban capitalists was a conditional system of equivalence with the regional tribal leaders to ensure security. D- Configuration of Qajar bureaucracy with regional social institutions Despite that the Qajar government was independent from forces and social classes and was not limited to a specific legal framework before the constitution. But did not benefit from the central authority like the Safavid and Afshariya periods. During this period, the central state was generally limited to collecting taxes, maintaining public order, and regulating foreign relations and the majority of public services such as education, health and judicial courts are controlled outside the administrative institutions. It can be acknowledged that the administrative system hierarchical position in the Qajar era was in a position parallel to other social-regional institutions and was not superior to them.E - The Functional Model of the Clergy Social Class under tribal DiscourseThe delegation of political-administrative authorities to tribal leaders and rural landowners and urban capitalist classes caused these forces to start an independent interaction with the clergy in order to gain religious legitimacy to increase the social influence of their economic-social activities. The Qajar kings also needed the command of Jihad by clergy in times of war for their legitimacy. From other side, although in some cases they reacted against the oppression of the kings to the urban capitalist’s rights and landowners; But they never tried to eliminate the hegemony of tribal discourse. 

In the framework of the tribal discourse articulation, delegation of authority to the nomadic chieftains and landowners was considered by government in order to reduce the possibility of disorder and rebellion against the government in different regions of country. Also, this discourse with the foundation of socio-economic settings to strengthen the self-sufficient production of the regions. In general, these institutions and social forces were equated with each other under the tribal discourse that the anti-discourse of bureaucratic order center-periphery and the centralized political management system could not be placed in a hegemonic position in this period.