Social Capital Downfall in Iran’s Economy (in Persian)

Economic literature in 1990s notifies that the larger a nation’s social capital is, the more fortunate and wealthier the nation would be. Social capital or social part of production function is a nation’s historical heritage that aids the civil society in solving its problems through confidence factor. Civil society institutions encourage the option of cooperation strategy by means of information transfer and giving long-run aspect to the role of civil society. The institutions make it possible to move toward rapid economic growth and social development by solving more unsolved social problems. Iranian people used to be deprived of such a historical bless, but after the triumph of Islamic Revolution in 1979, they could change the interest game structure in the civil society in a way that mutual confidence and cooperation became a desirable strategy in social interactions. But now a noticeable question is how we could comment on mutual confidence element within the past two decades of Iran’s economy with the help of social capital theory. Have the efforts of official institutions to guard the values of the Revolution guided the country to more confidence building or the approach taken was faulty? Has the national-level confidence become reinforced or it has been turned family-bound or group-bound confidence instead? Have the people been encouraged to more participation in civil society institutions or they would rather get out of civil society and appear as individuals in economic field instead? In the end, have the horizontal institutions had more chance or vertical ones and what is the difference between the two? Regarding the economic growth difference between 1980s and 1990s in Iran’s economy, the paper concludes that relative weakness in Iran’s economy in 1990s as well as the recent years might be due to social capital downfall though there are other causes as well. An option for boosting social capital in Iran’s economy at present might be movement toward regional monetary links. These links potentially support individual liberties and horizontal civil institutions by means of lowering inflation and offering physical capital needed for reconstruction. Democratic values in the new atomsphere are the cornerstone of social confidence building.