Introduction
In Iran, due to the historically high concentration of the country’s population in rural areas, and the resulting importance of agricultural activities, the rural sector has been a major focus of development policies by the state. In recent decades, the Iranian government has embarked on major developmental projects in rural areas. In fact, Iran is one of the few developing countries where agricultural development and solving rural problems have been considered a major developmental prerequisite and an explicit policy. Much of the literature on rural Iran has focused on reforms as a direct consequence of government initiatives and projects. By and large, rural development is seen in the literature as “a form of state intervention.”
More often, however, rural areas change as a consequence of both planned government actions and overarching developments, nationally and globally. Within this broader concept, this paper reviews major rural reforms in modern Iran, focusing on processes of change and continuity in the country’s rural sector. It first provides a brief historical background focusing on rural and agricultural change before the revolution, before reviewing the post-revolutionary rural policies. The concluding remarks discuss major policy outcomes and developmental challenges confronting the rural sector, focusing mainly on the nature of rural policies and unintended policy/macro development outcomes.