The Effectiveness of Upgrading the Domestic Political Units of the Land on Development of Rural Settlements, Case Study: Sirvan County in Ilam province

One of the contexts of development in rural areas is to pay attention to the issue of political divisions and promotion of political units of the land. All the facilities and services of rural areas are under the influence of political divisions of the country. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of upgrading the political unit of the Sirvan district to the county on the development of rural settlements. The present study is of analytical-correlation type and has been done by survey method. The statistical population is the households of 53 villages. The level of analysis is villages and household analysis units. The number of samples was 384 households determined by Cochran's formula. Data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by experts from universities and its reliability was confirmed by Cochran's alpha coefficient (0.850). The questionnaire was completed by field survey alongwith interview. Questionnaires were distributed according to the share of population of each village and completed randomly. Moreover, a semi-structured interview was held with 24 Dehyar (village administrator) and 11 related experts. Questionnaire data were analyzed by dependent T-test, regression and correlation coefficient. The results show that Factors affecting these changes and developments can be summarized into three categories of factors: Economic, Socio-cultural and Political-administrative factors. In order to make the promotion of political-administrative levels more effective, it is suggested to strengthen the mentioned factors and to eliminate and weaken the existing obstacles.