Regional Differences of Economic-Political Power in Iran

Poverty alleviation, regional balances and balanced development are considered in all upstream documents and the development plans after the revolution in Iran. The political leaders and policy-makers have also emphasized on them continuously. Nevertheless, there are always major imbalances and differences in poverty and development levels among Iran’s provinces. In this study, unlike previous studies, regional imbalances are measured in terms of political economy. This study tries to explain regional imbalances with economic-political power and then adjust it with consider to population, area and distance of the provinces from the center of political power. To doing so, at first, the economic-political power matrix is formed for Iran’s provinces and then the economic-political power is calculated using TOPSIS method during the period of 2004-2019. After that, this matrix is adjusted using population, area and distance of provinces from capital city. The results show that even with the adjustment, economic-political power among regions is significantly differ. The regions cannot be considered homogeneous from the point of view of economic-political power.