Political Tribal Culture and Political Participation in Ilam Province

The subject of this article is investigating the tribal dependences in eight terms of Islamic parliament elections in Ilam province.Although holding elections and widespread inclination of groups,and different social classes of people toward elections may seem apparently a favorable characteristic of increased political and social participation and may indicate departure from traditional and emotional situation toward a sensible and foundational state, but thinking about process and events related to eight terms of Islamic parliament elections in Ilam province is expressing that political participation in this province has affected political tribal and causes a type of political participation in this area. What is to be intended in this article is that despite modern approaches of people’s presence in social and political decision makings and determination of their legal destiny, this modern device is still integrated with tribal and racial prejudice so that the motivation of Ilam people for voting to their parliament representative is not because of social and political awareness, but because of tribal and emotional prejudices and motivations. Participation of Ilam’s people is motivated by different factors that emotional and unreasonable factors dominate among them all. Among these factors, tribal and clan dependence is a significant factor for victory of candidates and participation of people in elections.Results of this survey show that tribal relations has played a key role up to sixth parliaments elections in Ilam province but after khordad 1376 due to political changes and upheavals i.e., strong impact of sects in political upheavals, sixth, seventh, and eighths Islamic parliament elections changed to a competitive race among tribes and sects. It was afterwards that the influence of tribalism in political affairs of Ilam decreased gradually (though slowly). In this article, the subject has been explained by using a statistical data and descriptive-analytical model.