Concept of Public Policy Termination in Iran (A Research Based on Grounded Theory)

Policy science experts believe that policy termination is a step in the process of policy making which, compared to other steps, has been less attended to. Terminated policies are of two types: 1) those based on logic and rationality (resolved public issues, inefficient current policies, etc.) and 2) those abandoned (and ultimately terminated) after compilation and official notification. Effort has been made, in this qualitative research, to theorize the second type through, first, collecting data by conducting structured interviews with the Iranian policy making authorities/managers, and then after extracting the “key themes”, developing the theory of public policy termination according to GT which is a systematic and qualitative theorization method. The findings show that the central phenomenon of such a process is a theme called “unstable public policy” that explains policy termination in a process that involves some basic disruptive factors supported by certain causal ones.