State Studies

Meta-synthesis of Iranian Research about the Downsizing of the Government in Iran

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Gholamreza Hadad 1
Ali Aleali 2

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Political Economy and Public Policy, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran .

2 M.A, Department of Political Sciences, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22054/tssq.2025.70381.1339
Abstract
Introduction
There are different views in different schools of political economy about size of the government and its effects on efficiency of policies and on productivity in markets. Government downsizing as a way to increasing economic efficiency, effectiveness of public management and participation of the private sector has been considered by some researchers and politicians since the 80s. The most important problem in the approach of government downsizing is the ineffectiveness of the government's intervention in the economy. so, government intervention in markets by creating monopoly for state companies and actors reduces the level of competition and innovation among private enterprises. The necessity of government downsizing was demonstrated by the economic recession in the 70s and the debt crisis among developing countries. In order to organize their economy, these countries started to receive help from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and put the policies of reducing state ownership on the agenda. So, the root of problems was assessed in the large presence of the government in this field.
The downsizing of the government in Iran has also brought a diverse range of researchers' opinions. Iranian researchers have used different methods to organize their research when faced with the concept of government downsizing in Iran. This has caused a wide range of researches with different approach, methodology, sampling, data combination and different results. The aforementioned diversity in practice makes it difficult to have a precise and systematic knowledge of different opinions about government downsizing in order to use them in new researches or their application to the (practical) policy field. This necessitates the use of new research methods for the systematic classification of previous research and providing a new synthesis. Meta-synthesis is one of the appropriate methods to achieve this goal. In the meta-synthesis method, by systematically studying and reviewing the researches related to a topic, the researcher provides a detailed perspective of the researches in question and provides a new synthesis of them. According to these points, this article is trying to use the Meta-synthesis method in the field of studies related to the downsizing of the government in Iran.
The main goal of this article is to evaluate the opinions of Iranian researchers regarding government downsizing solutions in Iran and their systematic classification using the meta-synthesis method in order to provide a new synthesis of previous studies. In this way, the main question is as follows; What is the synthesis of opinions of Iranian researchers regarding the goals, solutions and obstacles in the process of government downsizing in Iran?
Materials and Methods
In this article, the opinions of Iranian researchers regarding the goals, solutions, and obstacles of government downsizing in Iran have been evaluated and a systematic classification of them has been made using the meta-synthesis method in order to provide a new synthesis of previous studies. The meta-synthesis carried out in this study consisted of 33 studies. This number of researches has been selected from more than 100 researches based on the indicators of the scientific validity, the validity of the publisher, the scientific and research history of the author and the citations to it.
Results and Discussion
The results of this synthesis show that according to Iranian researchers, the goals of government downsizing in Iran include reducing government economic activities, increasing efficiency and competition in market. Regarding downsizing solutions, privatization, modern public management, and good governance are also considered by Iranian researchers. According to Iranian researchers, the obstacles of government downsizing include rentierism, Iranian political culture, the lack of prerequisites for the implementation of the government downsizing policy, and the emergence of class conflict following the implementation of the government downsizing policy. Finally, the synthesis of the article was presented by examining the public-private partnership model (PPP) as a new solution for government downsizing and as an alternative to the Previous solutions.
 Conclusion
Using the experience and knowledge of the private sector in Iran's economy, whether in the form of downsizing or in general, according to the special conditions of access to natural rent, has a different situation compared to the experience of the early models of the process of government downsizing, that is, England and the United States. The synthesis made in this article suggests the use of the public-private partnership model. In this way, a balance is created between the use of knowledge, expertise and, more precisely, the market-based performance of the private sector with the responsibility and accountability of the government institutions. The result is that both the possibility of reducing the economic burden of the government institutions and the natural rent belonging to all members of the society in the form of public property will not be converted into private property.

Keywords

Downsizing of the government
Meta-synthesis
Privatization
Rentierism
Public-private partnership
Subjects
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State Studies
Volume 10, Issue 39
Autumn 2024
Pages 209-252

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