A Study on the Obstacles of Citizens Social Participation As a Component of Urban Diplomacy

The socio-political participation of citizens and legal people like crafts, guilds and humanist organization is very important in the process of decision making and performing. This matter in Iran face a lot of obstacles because of social, cultural, historical and religious reasons. Therefore, this study has been done with the goal to identify socio-political obstacles in Iran relying on elites point of view. After a review on sources and developing a conceptual frame about participation, data with qualitative method and semi-structured interview with 4 group of people including: former and present members of Islamic City Council of Tehran, Senior managers of Tehran Municipality, members of science committee in public universities and city councils experts with theoretical and targeted sampling has been chosen. The criterion in the end of sampling was theoretical saturation, after 30 interview was obtained. Data have been analyzed and coded with qualitative content technic by applying to software Maxqda-12. The result of analyzing showed 4 main categories and 10 sub-categories as obstacles in participating including historical obstacles (historical despotism and experiences in the beginning of the revolution), religious paradigm (religious teaching), society’s alienation with participating (elusive participation society, participation being neglected in socialization, and undesirable quality of participation) and political-structural challenges (lack of civil society, damaged mechanism of participation, outlook towards participation, low prosperity in government-people interactions). So we can say that a stable and cohesive way of participating has not been formed in our country; and participating in Iran has alwayes been being faced with social, cultural, historical, religious obstacles and lack of an environment for practicing and assiduity.