Cooperation of Iran with Central Asia and the Caucasus Countries against Smuggling of Goods and Currency

Smuggling of goods and currency is one of the problems that has its roots abroad. The consequences of trafficking go beyond mere economic loss. Trafficking can destabilize communities and contribute to wider regional tensions. A large part of these problems is related to communication between countries, so the purpose of this research is to examine the problems and provide solutions for changing Iran’s policy and convergence with the Central Asia and Caucasus region in the face of this event. The main question of this article is how to change the approach to combating the smuggling of goods and currency between Iran and the region of Central Asia and the Caucasus? The major challenge we face in dealing with the problems of trafficking is the difficulty in conceptualizing the complex issues of collective action, which, with the involvement of many local actors and social networks, takes on another challenge. Public administrators around the world operate very differently in political and socio-economic contexts. As a result, the resources and capacities of public administrators in these areas vary greatly, as globalization has intensified in recent decades, national and regional boundaries, economic, social, political and ideological issues have increasingly been transcended. In fact, many of these issues are beyond the norm. Traditional patterns that emphasize the role of formal organizations are insufficient to address many problems, including trafficking. As a result, concepts such as multi-level governance are increasingly studied. To address complex social, political and economic issues it is necessary to use multi-level policies and multi-level personalities to create solutions to deal with smuggling of goods.Research question: Each of the problems that occur in countries has an external nature and effect. In other words, internal crises have regional and international roots and with the continuation of the crisis, these consequences will spread and with its continuation, all its effects and consequences can be recognized. Meanwhile, the manner and type of governance within countries has a significant effect on creating and solving problems. In the meantime, there are multi-level governance that can strengthen and improve the fight against trafficking. The main question of this article is how can we change the approach of combating smuggling of goods and currency by considering multi-level governance in regional policy making?

Research hypothesis:

 In response to the main question, the hypothesis is raised that multi-level governance strengthens and improves regional policy in the field of combating goods and currency smuggling.

In this research, the method of text and content analysis of the type of "content network" introduced by atride - stepperling will be used. This method tries to access the text from main themes, organizing themes and inclusive themes; therefore, first, the text analysis of all interviews and the extraction of basic themes, in other words, the delivery of the text, will be carried out. Then, the method of abstracting and extracting the themes of the organizer and finally discovering and explaining the network of themes of governance factors related to the fight against smuggling of goods and currency will be done. Therefore, qualitative and visual analysis methods based on data and content analysis have been used in this research. In fact, by viewing the relevant documents and receiving the primary data, documents, recordings and results of the interviews are accurately and regularly evaluated and analyzed, and objectives and questions are explained with a qualitative method.  The data collection method is interview, and the data analysis method is thematic analysis. The sampling method was targeted and snowball, and smuggling experts were contacted to collect data. The data and findings of the research include the opinions of interviewees about the proposed strategies for policymaking in the fight in different dimensions, which were analyzed and presented in the form of comprehensive themes. According to the findings of the research, the re-design of the police to fight the smuggling of goods and currency has been investigated at the transnational level and in operational and executive dimensions. To determine the validity of the research, the research tool was approved by several elites in the field of security and law enforcement concepts, and to check the reliability of qualitative research, there are several strategies that are used here to verify the reliability of data by the experts. Therefore, after extracting concepts and themes and drawing a network of themes between them, they were asked to confirm the researcher's understanding of the data by sending the results to several elites. The aim of this task is to ensure that the researcher has correctly analyzed and classified the data correctly.

The data and findings of the research include the opinions of the interviewees about the proposed strategies for policy making in the struggle in different dimensions, which were analyzed and presented in the form of 7 overarching themes and 23 strategies. According to the interviews conducted in the field of operations and implementation of the fight against smuggling of goods and currency, there was a lot of emphasis on the need to change the structure of the relations between countries in dealing with smuggling. These changes are expressed in dimensions such as decision-making and operations, budget, participation of foreign parties.

According to the interviews conducted in operational and executive fields in the fight against smuggling of goods and currency, the need to change the structure of relations between countries in combating smuggling was emphasized. These changes are expressed in dimensions such as decision-making and operations, budget, participation of foreign parties. In an operational and transnational framework, the most important solutions provided by the interviewees are the creation of security agreements and information sharing between different countries.