Developmental approaches appeared in the campaign slogans of Parliament Election candidates and political groups in Tehran

The aim of this paper is to study the impacts of developmental approaches slogans raised in the parliamentary elections campaigns in Iran. To search the issue, we gathered campaign items from 320 parliament candidates and 44 political groups. Then, using theoretical approaches and concepts of development, the content of election goals and plans of both candidates and political groups were analyzed. Our findings indicate that half of the candidates and one fifth of political groups who participated in the election competition were without goal and plan. Among those who had goal and plan the discourse of "wellbeing-societal" was dominant in their campaign slogans and the content of their goals and plans were close to the developmental approach of "basic needs". In addition the general content of slogans did not match the overall and balanced development and some important dimension of development, specifically foreign policy, cultural, and environmental issues, were marginalized. The frequency of welfare slogans and paying less attention to metaphysical slogans indicate that individual candidates and groups targeted deprived and lower social classes and were aimed to attract their support.