By Kamal Azari
In the past two and half centuries since the advent of the modern state, our understanding of the role of government has changed. From an independent entity that makes possible advances in human progress to a platform that makes human advances possible. Today, we almost universally understand and agree with the idea that individual creativity, collaboration, and entrepreneurship is the source of human development. However, current government structures do not reflect this development. We need a new model to respond to these current realities. The best way to create such a model is to start
with a clearly defined understanding of some of the core principles of government, social structures, and economics:
- Absolute power breeds absolute corruption.
- Concentrating political power and control of wealth among a few individuals creates corruption and cronyism.
- Creativity, collaboration, perseverance, hard work, and entrepreneurship are the driving engines of social change, progress, and economic development.
These understanding played a crucial role in the creation of a new model for future government in Iran. We call it Community-Centric Government. The goal of this system is to promote “participation in decision-making, social creativity, political self-determination, a fair distribution of wealth and tolerance for the diversity of all individual citizens, and promotion of self-reliance.” This would best be achieved by an association of content-driven small-scale autonomous communities bonded through shared values and rituals. Community-Centric government creates just such an association.
A New Unit of Local Government
Most modern nations are politically divided into states or provinces. These large units are often determined by geography, or for the convenience of the Central government. Instead, we propose a new, more local political division: the Community. As we define it, the Community is a geographically-contiguous area with a maximum of 300,000 people. The community government will serve this area directly, providing services, education, health and welfare, housing, and other needs.
Much of the power behind community government comes from the Community’s citizens themselves. Each citizen will be required to provide one day of work per month free of charge for the benefit of the Community. Funding for services and materials will be provided through the payment of a per-capita lump sum by the Central Government to the Community Government. Community Governments will function on a largely autonomous basis; that is, each community government will decide its own priorities and responses to community needs while complying with the laws of the state.
Epitomizing Power in Central Government
In the Community-Centric model of government, the power of the Central Government is epitomizing but limited. The Executive Branch is highly specialized, responsible only for the collection of all taxes, national defense, and protection of individual rights of citizens against Community Government excesses. The Executive Branch will provide Community Governments with lump-sum cash payments based on population. This reduces the potential for lobbying and corruption within the Central Government. It also helps to protect the individual rights of citizens.
In part, because they are often homogeneous, traditional communities can be constraining and authoritarian and can take a tyrannical approach to free will and individual freedom. Communities that balance both diversity and unity can provide a counterweight, but these can only form with incentives. Funds delivered from the Central Government, which can, of course, be withheld if human rights are violated, provide powerful incentives for the formation of diverse, cooperative groups of citizens who respect each other’s rights.
A Fourth Branch of Central Government
The second element of our model is a new vision for the national government. In the Community-Centric model, the government at the national level will be primarily responsible for providing national security, guaranteeing individual rights within the communities, and collecting taxes. There will be four co-equal branches of government:
- Executive
- Legislative
- Judicial
- National Trust Fund
While the first three branches of government are common to most contemporary democracies, the fourth branch will need some explanation. In the Community-Centric model, the National Trust Fund is designed to ensure that all members of society get a fair share of the profits from national resources. An example of a similar government entity is the Alaska Permanent Fund, set up by the government of Alaska, a state within the United States. All Alaska citizens receive an annual payment based on the value of oil extracted from the state by petroleum companies.
The National Trust Fund would be different from the Alaska Permanent Fund in a significant way. Rather than giving direct payments to every citizen, The National Trust Fund would use its share of profits from the commercial exploitation of resources to provide low-interest loans to entrepreneurs. The goal of these loans would be the creation of an entrepreneurial and sustainable— economy. This would foster great change in the socioeconomy of Iran, where the extraction of natural resources has tended to benefit only a few and to foster a concentration of power that limits innovation and personal freedom.
Much of this change will be made possible by technology. The power of postmodern technology empowers the citizens of Iran to reach the rest of the world from their own homes. In such an environment, the concentration of labor is less and less important. People can use their computers and modems at home to do a good part of their office work, from processing insurance claims to trading worldwide or providing services for companies thousands of miles away. The successful communities are the ones that can best train individuals with exceptional entrepreneurship abilities. In such communities, inequality among citizens is significantly reduced, while social order and autonomy are balanced rather than maximized.
Power and Trust Networks
The Community-Centric model of government is not revolutionary in changing the socioeconomics of society, as it intends to create change within the structure of politics. The model uses existing and newly-formed social groups, trust networks, and individuals to re-arrange the traditional political structures of Iran and create a recognizable, yet more responsive, form of government. While these political structures must evolve, they are already familiar. In fact, they have been in place throughout much of Iran for centuries, albeit informally. Instead of uprooting traditional governments, the goal is to enhance them by encouraging the growth of indigenous government and localized entrepreneurship that will lead to better community life for all.
By limiting the power of the central government and expanding local power, Community-Centric Government creates a clearinghouse for allocating resources to local community members based on their specific needs. Influential members of the Community will be engaged in providing services to their citizens—and disengaged from destructive national power politics. Local efforts will involve a bargaining process among citizens invested in their community members, a process that ensures that money and political power is not concentrated in the hands of autocratic individuals or a single trust network. These interactions on the ground will increase trust and build relationships among different factions within the Community.
At the same time, the Community-Centric Government’s service requirement will provide an estimated 10,000 persons that, on a daily basis, provided the needed free labor to a Community, which helps it to implement local policies. This will create a sense of citizen entitlement and ownership that is the basis of the civil society and the rule of law.
Protection of Individual Rights
Under the Community-Centric model, the Central Government will be responsible for protecting individual freedoms. A great deal of the leverage in this undertaking will be provided by the lump sum cash payments to each Community. Because they know that continuance of these payments depends upon, among other things, the protection of human rights within the Community, local leaders will be more likely to protect those rights.
Perhaps more important, the community government will deny the central government the modern central bureaucracy or the social apparatus to repress the population; even autocratic rulers will lack the means to implement social controls. The Central Government will need independent communities to govern and rule. In this regard, the relationship between Community Government and Central Government very much resembles Iran’s traditional rulers, who provided statewide security, but allowed a great deal of autonomy on the local level. It is by looking to the past, and making sensible modifications to both traditional and modern forms of government, that Iran can look forward to a brighter future.
The opinion expressed do not necessarily reflect those of ITC
