An Explanation to the Causes of Changes in Iran's Social Capital

Social capital has recently turned into an outstanding subject in development literature and considering its socio-economic and political implications in our country, and Iran’s 20-year vision document has required its improvement. One of the crucial issues of social capital is its formation and developments whose understanding appears a must and prerequisite to improve it. A brief glance at Iran’s social capital developments reveals that despite phenomena such as revolution, war, extensive influence of religion, and increase of education levels (which are all regarded the factors of social capital increase according to the present theories) the amount of social capital has diminished in Iran. Relying on institutional and discourse theories, this article introduces a new theoretical framework with the aim of analyzing this problem. The findings of this research show that the main cause of changes in Iran’s social capital is the discourse changes and its decrease could be analyzed on this basis.