The Role of Islamic City Council in the Promotion of Citizenship Rights (Case: Islamic City Council of Tehran)

Today, the city and every environment of civil and social life become meaningful to the citizens. The relationship between citizenship and urban management is one of the important issues that have been considered in the field of urban management in the world. One of the factors that can lead to the realization and sustainability of the democratic system in society through public gatherings is the attention to citizens’ rights that can be achieved by the councils to achieve this goal. In a comprehensive glance, the councils have the keyword of civil rights in itself since the philosophy of the council itself is a part of the realization of the criteria and components of the citizenship rights. In other words, the councils are the realization of citizenship rights. In this regard, the present study examines the performance of Tehran City Council in the realization of citizenship rights. This research is applied and survey-descriptive in terms of method. Data collection was carried out in two ways: library-documentary and survey-field with questionnaires. The available sample is 150 employees of the Islamic Council and 384 citizens of Tehran in 2016. To analyze the collected data, SPSS software, T-test, Pearson correlation coefficient and regression were used. The results of this study showed that citizens of Tehran have less than average performance of city council due to lack of proper mechanism for monitoring city affairs and realization of citizenship rights. In addition, there is a positive and significant correlation between the performance of Islamic City Council of Tehran (supervision of urban management, electing mayor and approval of municipal affairs) with the extent of realization of citizenship rights. Moreover, the results of regression test indicates that among the dimensions of the Islamic City Council of Tehran, the variables of electing mayor, the supervision of urban management and approval of municipal affairs predict respectively the extent of realization of citizenship rights. Therefore, providing appropriate mechanisms to better realization of these criteria in the Islamic City Council of Tehran will help to play the best role of this institution in realizing citizenship rights in order to increase Tehran citizens’ quality of life.