Expounding the Functions of Area Debate in the Unitary State

Unitary states are faced with heterogeneous elements and consequently regionalist forces because of the vastness and the number of inhabitant that these elements and forces sometimes challenge political system acceptability and states entities. Most of political geography researches in Iran in the domain of literature on cultural diversity have taken from ethnicity concept which its literature has been more in connection with sociology and political science. But country's political geography facts and experiences during history, in particular in current one hundred years, show that the explanation of country's cultural variety needs to take political geography approach. This article, with a political geography’s approach, is based on this assumption that “region and regionalism concepts have a high explanation power in representation the phenomena of cultural-spatial variety of countries having a political unitary system and has dealt with from such a perspective to describe region and regionalism literature in political unitary system. The research methodology adopted is descriptive- analytic and the data- gathering procedure is based on library finding. This research investigated geographical concept of region and types of the regionalism to expound spatial-cultural variety of political unitary systems. Research findings show that cultural and spatial heterogeneous is a part of states and government's nature which is related to the intensity of these heterogeneous and political systems’ function states are involved by regionalism forces which sometimes challenge the state and sometimes the country entity. In this case, cultural and economic regionalism which represents resident's dissatisfaction towards current situation criticizes the state legitimacy and demand to reform dominant approaches. Political regionalism is the most challenging kind of regionalism that national solidarity and spatial unitary of country or state is challenged. From the formation of nation-states, the debate of spatial-cultural variety has been a part of concerns of the political system actors in connection with national solidarity and spatial unity. Political systems which have less spatial-cultural variety have chosen a space political management based on integration. However, research findings show that these countries also encounter with regionalist forces variety more or less. Since different science's approach are heterogeneous related to the different phenomenon, political geography needs such a literature which has connection with spatial-local facts. Hence, region and regionalism approach has a high competence to represent countries spatial-cultural varieties subject. Based on regionalist approach, existence of region and regionalism is a natural phenomenon when would be dangerous and discriminate that cultural and economic regionalism finds a political orientation. So, paying attention to the regional demands can prevent cultural and economic regionalism to become political, and consequently increase national solidarity.