Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Assistant Professor, Department of Law, Shahid Ashrafi Esfahan University, Esfahan, Iran
Abstract
The theory and practice of policy making in today's world has found a very vital role because the legitimacy of governments which is measured by the ability to solve public problems through public policy. If the government lacks the ability to solve public problems, no other element can legitimize its continued rule. From perspective of public policy making discipline, there is no achievement for any public policy unless policy makers and citizens have active and intense participation in the policy making process as well as policy implementation. Because in a public policy making relationship, one side as a policy maker is obliged to solve the problem of the other side. This relationship, as one of the most influential relationships on people's life quality, needs to be carefully regulated and guaranteed. The law, as a normative discipline is supposed to regulate relations between these two agents. In the initial conception of representative democracy, as a legal and political frame work of governing society, people were completely removed from political and policy-making processes by electing representatives and were only subject to the decisions of their representatives. In other words, in classic version of representative democracy, almost all of political power is in the representative bodies’ hands. It is possible that minority and pressure groups try to present their issues as public problems by influencing such institutions. In democratic age there is a political and legal tendency to maximizing the role of citizens in policy making process in order to prevent any legitimation's crisis which may be raised from representative democracy shortcomings. The mentioned weakness can be considered as systematic and deep corruption in a decision-making system. In order to fix this weakness, the basic step is to redistribute powers and jurisdictions between different actors of the process of policy making, because studies on current democracies demonstrate that, the first step in policy making process, i.e., recognizing the public problem, is the most important, critical and crucial one. In other words, if the people do not have any role or influence in the first step of public policy making, the whole process will be at a very serious risk. This paper, using descriptive and analytic approach, criticized legal framework of recognizing the public problem in Iran. In Iran, due to the great legal authority and authority of the legislative body, such mechanisms have not been foreseen for the people and even other institutions. Even a powerful institution like the presidency cannot resist the decisions of the legislative body. So, it seems democracy in Iran is still very similar to the classical type of representative democracy and needs to be revised and accompanied by recent developments in the knowledge of politics and law. By distinguishing between representative-centered and citizen-centered approach to policy making, the author, proposed a shift from former approach to latter, in interpretation of legal documents specially Iran's constitutional law. The shift will lead to participatory democracy and multi-level policy making. This new approach, by emphasizing the role of people as diagnosers of public problems, reduces the risk of semi-public problems being included in government programs and policies. The proposed approach says no problem is a public problem unless it affects the ordinary life of reasonable number of citizens. Before reaching to this stage, the government should not allocate any budget to solve it. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran has provided the possibility of interpretation in favor of the proposed approach in many parts considering the decisive role of the people, including in Article No.: 59. Creating mechanisms to realize such a role for the people is one of the necessities of Iran's current decision-making system. By considering the countries experiences such as Italy and USA, suggestions such as veto rights for the people regarding the issues raised in the policy-making institutions, and the right to raise the issue for them to be discussed in the same institutions can be proposed as necessary mechanisms. In these countries, at the request of the people and upon reaching a certain number, the legislative assembly will be required to remove an issue (a semipublic-problem) from the agenda, or put an issue on its agenda.
Keywords
- Public Policy Making
- Public Problem
- Participatory Democracy
- Multi-Level Policy Making
- Citizen-Centered
Main Subjects
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