The sense of citizenship in the capital cities of the provinces of Iran

Citizenship stems from the mutual relations of the state and the individual. These relations involve, on the one hand, the state's support of the individual. In the present article, the concept of citizenship is defined using three basic elements: political identity, equality of participation and legal equality. Political identity is characterized with identity with the nation-state; equality of participation is characterized with the right to elect and being elected; legal equality is characterized with the equal rights of distribution and equality of opportunities. The results of the secondary analysis of the data show that, first, the four empirical dimensions of citizenship are in the following order in terms of the contributions they make to the formation of this concept: sense of equality of opportunities, sense of equal rights of distribution, sense of political identity and, finally, sense of equality of participation. Second, the sense of civizenship with respect to the three elements of equality of opportunities, equal distribution of rights and equality of participation is rather moderate, whereas the sense of political identity is very strong. Third, the intensity of the four dimensions of citizenship is almost the same among various ethnic, religious, professional and educational groups, with the social strata hardly affecting the sense of citizenship. The weakness of the sense of citizenship in the three areas mentioned and the strength of the sense of political loyalty shows, on the one hand, a drop in the resources of civil legitimacy and, on the other hand, the existence of other resources of legitimacy, specially religious legitimacy. This explains the fact that, in spite of the weak record of the state in safeguarding the rights of citizenship, the sense of loyalty to the state is still strong among Iranian citizens. This, it is suggested, is because the religious resources of legitimacy compensate for the drop in the resources of civil legitimacy.