The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking in Iran Government Budgeting

Document Type : Research Paper

Abstract

This article tends to analyze rent seeking in Iran government budgeting. It aims at developing an analytical framework to help us increase our understanding of rent seeking in public budgeting. In fact the paper focuses on political economy aspect of rent seeking, and particularly on rent seeking in government budgeting. The first section discusses rent seeking in government budgeting based on the public choice theory. The next section considers the interaction between politicians and voters. The discussion will proceed by exploring and analyzing four interaction models between politicians and voters: Fiscal persuasion, fiscal exchange, fiscal compulsion and fiscal abstention. The last section presents the ways in which government budgetary actors and agents (i.e. voters, politicians, bureaucrats and pressure groups) take certain shares of the budget public resources. Furthermore, there is an analysis of the mechanism and processes that facilitate rent seeking in public budgeting .

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