A Meta-analysis of Iranian Development Plan's Pathologies

Even though Iran has a 65-year history of development planning, it is still considered a developing state with a huge amount of human, financial and natural resources, which have been consumed but produced less results. Therefore, it seems necessary to examine and analyze critically the dominant approach in the country’s planning regime and identify its weak and strong points. Although many studies have been undertaken to identify the weak and strong points of Iran’s planning system, more research is required. In this paper, Iran`s development plans are reviewed for almost six decades. Development plans are studied in terms of the most dominant theories of development, coverage, time horizon, spatial planning, geographical coverage and methods of preparation and implementation. Furthermore, this research investigates the practical problems of development planning. In this paper, the weak points are classified at three levels of pre-planning, planning and post-planning. This paper used Meta-Analysis Method (MAM) to combine the findings of other researches and tried to describe the weaknesses of Iran’s development plan regime clearly in a detailed and understandable manner. As a result, this paper introduces a comprehensive model that shows different aspects of Iranian development plans which could be for policy makers. Finally, different ways of addressing the weaknesses are presented and recommended.