Pathology of the Bureaucratic Environment in Iran from the Perspective of Political Development: A Meta-Synthesis Analysis

Khorramshad, Mohammad Bagher; Karamzadeh, Tahereh

doi:10.22054/tssq.2025.72134.1382

Pathology of the Bureaucratic Environment in Iran from the Perspective of Political Development: A Meta-Synthesis Analysis

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Mohammad Bagher Khorramshad ¹

Tahereh Karamzadeh ²

¹ Professor, Department of Political Science, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

² PhD, Department of Political Science, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22054/tssq.2025.72134.1382

Abstract

Introduction
A main requirement for the advancement of a society is the existence of dynamic and high-quality institutions and organizations. Such institutions can promote a sociopolitical system through their performance and minimize damages and shocks during any probable developments, challenges, or crises based on their strengths and consistency. On the other hand, societies removed from the indicators of political development struggle with challenges like institutional inefficiency. A major sector of each society that acts as a criterion for the assessment of political development indicators is its bureaucracy. Bureaucracy, through its efficient performance, can contribute to the improvement of political development indicators, while its inefficiency can pose challenges to political development.
Previous studies on bureaucracy in Iran have been heavily influenced by managerial and economic perspectives, and have rarely addressed the issue from the standpoint of social sciences and political development. therefore, approaches to the study of bureaucracy in Iran, from the perspective of political science, have been overlooked, or more precisely, have not received adequate attention. Therefore, given the existing literature, this study seeks to analyze the bureaucratic environment in Iran from the perspective of political development using the meta-synthesis method.
In this regard, the present study aimed to determine the issues facing Iran’s bureaucratic environment from a political development perspective according to the views offered by a group of experts. After the initial coding and the synthesis of the concepts were carried out, the findings indicated that the issues of the bureaucratic system could be categorized into the concepts of historical authoritarianism, inefficient bureaucracy, the weak rule of law, rentier state, the over-politicization of the administrative system, defective institutionalization, and anti-development state.
Methodology
The present study utilized the seven-stage method of Sandelowski and Barroso to synthesize the data. The seven-stage method includes the following stages:

Formulate the research questions, 2. Conduct a systematic review of the related literature, 3. Search and select suitable texts, 4. Extract information from the texts, 5. Analyze and synthesize the findings of the texts, 6. Conduct a quality control procedure, and 7. Report the findings (Sandelowski & Barroso, 2003, p. 121).

Based on the research question mentioned in the introduction section, a set of keywords, including political development, bureaucratic environment, administrative system, and the relationship between bureaucracy and development, was implemented to detect the relevant studies in the Ensani portal, the Scientific Information Database (SID), and Noor Specialized Magazines (Noormags). This process led to the identification of 658 articles, out of which 129 articles matched the topic of the study in terms of their titles, abstracts, and methodologies. However, 59studies were eliminated as they did not match the investigated period. Then, the abstracts were screened according to environmental pathology and the relationship between bureaucracy and political development, and, ultimately, 37 relevant articles were evaluated as suitable based on the relevance of their topics, the number of downloads, and their citations.
Results and Discussion
The themes and concepts resulting from the existing analyses on the pathology of the environmental status of Iran’s bureaucracy were extracted and specified as the main codes after reviewing the selected articles in a meticulous manner. Altogether, 206 codes were extracted using the open coding technique by analyzing the concepts within the selected 37 articles. Generally speaking, codes like the authoritarian historical and political structure, the transformation of a state into a rentier one, the over-politicization of the administrative system, and the inefficiency of the bureaucratic system were more prevalent than others in the investigated articles. Thus, the concepts deduced from the selected 37 articles were considered the codes of the study. The findings of the study obtained through the process of the conceptual classification of the codes showed seven general codes that could all be analyzed in relation to the central concept of political development. In other words, it was shown that the immaturity of Iran’s political development and the existence of a mixture of underdevelopment elements in the country influenced the bureaucratic structure and received mostly negative reviews from researchers in the field. To increase the reliability of the study, first, the researchers reviewed the process of the study based on the selected articles, and the performed coding was investigated once more. Then, two external reviewers were recruited to administer a secondary control over the stages of meta-synthesis, including access to accurate and expressive samples, coding, and the synthesis of the codes. Finally, a third expert was asked to control the extracted concepts so that the quality of the stages and data extraction could be confirmed.
Conclusion
At the political level, extensive political interventions in the administrative sphere and the imposition of extra-legal demands have prevented the administrative system from following its natural course and, as a result, it has become entangled in daily discussions and is no longer able to perform its regular and assigned tasks. On the other hand, the weakness of the rule of law, which has both historical reasons and is rooted in the wide-ranging political interventions in the bureaucracy, has led to the lack of a proper perspective on the state of the administrative system. In addition, inappropriate merit-based selection processes and ambiguity in promotion processes and weak training have created a form of inefficient bureaucracy that has been mentioned in all articles related to the phenomenon of bureaucracy in Iran without exception. The above factors all point to the need to redesign the bureaucracy based on the independence of the administrative system from political groups and to pay attention to educational and motivational mechanisms to attract and promote the most qualified individuals.

Keywords

Bureaucracy

Political development

Pathology

Meta-Synthesis

Iran

Subjects

Political Sociology

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