The Impact of Balanced Development on National Convergence in Border Regions

National convergence and cohesion and avoiding from divergence is one of the most important functions of governments to make the most benefit from resources and to prevent aliens from infiltrate and looting these resources. This issue is of great importance from the perspective that without national cohesion and productivity as the main keyword to proper utilization of resources, competition with other countries and regional and trans-regional actors will not be possible. Therefore, among other factors affecting national convergence which has been addressed in many social science studies, this study seeks to answer the question that, does balanced development lead to national convergence in border regions? To answer this question, a grounded theory method is used, in which the researcher attempts to achieve to a theory or a scientific concept regarding the subject under investigation and answer the research question by analyzing the phenomena and revealed facts, and conducting field research as well as by instigating related elites. In this study, 84 elites, mainly from border provinces, were surveyed on 8 economic indicators as effective (positive and negative) variables on national convergence that represented balanced development or underdevelopment.
The research findings show that 5 indicators of economic development, investment in infrastructure, investment in social capital, government development investment and human development affects national convergence more than 60% as a factor of national convergence strength and more than 70% as high and very high. The 3 indicators of youth unemployment, economic corruption in society, and class divisions or inadequate distribution of resources as a factor of weakness and threat are both high and very high, with an average of 40 and 45 and 80 percent, respectively. The results of the standard deviation test also show that strengthening the first five indicators will greatly increase the national convergence and cohesion in the border regions and strengthening the next three indicators will have the opposite effect.