Provincialization of the Islamic Consultative Assembly Elections

Document Type : Research Paper

Abstract

Both the elections of the Assembly for approving the Iranian Constitution and the Assembly of Experts were held provincially. This article argues that holding the parliamentary elections in Iran provincially would result on the one hand in several advantages including, improvement of the role of Local Councils, expansion of party culture, decrease of ethnic and tribal conflicts, and better implementation of tasks of the members of the Parliament. On the other, it would have some shortcomings and deficiencies such as decrease of people\'s participation, increase of social tensions and gaps, increase of electoral expenses and ignoring people\'s demands. In order to have these advantages and reduce the shortcomings, this article proposes a two-round, mixed electoral system. According to this proposed system, elections are based on selecting of individual candidates for each electoral district and choosing of electoral lists. This article also proposes a majoritarian system for each electoral district and a proportional system for each provincial level to distribute different seats among various party lists.

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