The Effect of Political Culture on Collaboration of Citizens with Local Government (A Case Study: Tehran)

Local government is considered as a political-bureaucratic structure, which is formed by the central government as a result of spatial distribution of the political power. As of forming the civilizations, a special type of society and culture has been formed in Iran due to a particular geographic position and getting involved in the path of the mankind movements as well. The political culture, which takes into account as presuppositions of the Iranian society, resulted in specific actions in the community especially in the political arena. Political participation of the citizens in the local government and influencing on the processes and mechanisms of the political culture considered as one of the consequents of such phenomenon. The present research aims to study the roots of citizens’ low participation in a local level, as the citizens have not participated in the local government in a meaningful manner since the formation of the local government in Iran. In this research, thus, we are looking for answering this question: “what is the effect of political culture on citizens’ collaboration in the local government is in Tehran?”The hypothesis of research includes: taking part in Tehran local government is affected by the impact of political culture in a national level, which some factors play a significant role in this regard such as: family, beliefs, symbols, values, dominant structure, tribal roots, and historical, geographical, social, and cultural developments. The results confirmed the claim regarding the study of political culture variables in a political participation in Tehran city. The present research investigated the relations between the political culture and citizens’ cooperation in the local government as a mechanism for participation of the citizens in the political-social destiny through descriptive method using documented resources.