The Developmental Trend of Rural Management in Iran with an Emphasis on the Islamic Councils Performance: A Case Study of Sistan Region

      The rural management system in Iran has gone through complex transformation in relation to socioeconomic structures in recent years. Generally, it can be said that rural management in Iran had been centralized and kept under the control of landlords, bailiffs and headmen of villages till 1962, and since then up to 1979 it was in the forms of village associations, and house of justice, with village headmen cooperation. After the revolution of 1979, the village councils have been established that were channels through which some government related organizations implemented their policies. The importance of the subject and the quantity of villages in the Sistan, led us to conduct the study in the region. The main hypothesis of the study was that councils had a positive performance towards the achievement of sustainable rural development. To this end 500 questionnaires were completed. The results indicated that councils had positive performances except in cases which lacked necessary facilities or credit.