An Analysis of the Impact of Political Economy on the Dynamics of Urbanization in the Period 1922-1979

Introduction

Urbanization is moving forward with these big steps that were unimaginable a few decades ago. Despite the many substantial differences observed in the form and methods of urbanization in different parts and economies of the world, urbanization has been on the rise in all parts of the world during the last 150 years. In parallel with this movement, the city has been marginalized in rural forms and rural life in all its aspects in such a way that the world is becoming urbanized (Azimi, 2013, 13). In other words, urbanization is one of the most important phenomena of the present age, as far as the urban revolution in the world is concerned (Novabakhsh et al., 2008: 3), the system of urbanization and its rapid process in critical conditions caused by the invasion of cities and the emergence of inflated services. Marginalization, hidden unemployment and the emergence of dual social networks of immigrants in cities (Novabakhsh et al., 2012: 3). Underdeveloped cities are hybrid institutions that have emerged as a result of two reactions. The first is the reaction to the social division of labor, which is a local phenomenon, and the second is the reaction to the global economy (Gilbert & Gagler, 1982: 43). Finding out the reasons why people prefer to become citizens and paying attention to the government's acceptance of the number of cities and the population's desire to live in cities raises many questions that cannot be answered except in the form of a scientific theory. Therefore, the main question that is addressed in the current research and includes the nature of the research is the effect of political economy on the urbanization of Iran in the years 1300 to 1357. in fact:

How does political economy affect the mechanism of urbanization in Iran?



Methodology

The present research is among the applied researches that was conducted with analytical method and quantitative approach for coverage data all over Iran in the period of 1300 to 1357 according to the statistics and figures of the number of cities and overall as a regional approach. In analytical and experimental studies about the effects of political economy on urbanization dynamics, spatial econometrics with three types of cross-sectional data, time series and consolidated data are used. Most econometric studies use cross-sectional data with a sample of variables for a specific time period. The advantage of this type of data in macro studies is that due to being fixed at a point in time and policies not changing, there is no need to use predictor variables. Meanwhile, in regional studies, due to the high variance of urbanization due to the concentration of urban population in some geographical regions of Iran compared to other regions, the curve of changes is obtained with better fitting results. Based on the previous empirical studies and the theoretical foundations presented, the indicators of the current research are divided into five political, economic, institutional, social and physical categories.



Results and discussion

One of the evolutions and developments in the use of quantitative and quantitative methods in behavioral sciences, especially economics, is the evolution of the branch of econometrics into spatial econometrics. According to the results, the spatial autocorrelation coefficient (λ) is significant at a high level, which confirms the existence of spatial dependence in the disturbance components of the population growth model and the number of cities in the country. This means that the shock on one province has spread to other provinces of the country. In other words, the spatial autocorrelation coefficient shows to what extent the urban population growth of a province has been affected by the impact on population growth in other provinces of the country. Among the economic variables, poverty index, unemployment rate and specialization index are known as the most important economic factors affecting the growth of urban population in the provinces of the country. The poverty index as a control variable has a negative effect on the growth of the country's population and is significant at a high level; It means that cities with higher poverty percentage have lower population growth. In this way, poverty and deprivation are considered to be one of the most important driving factors of the migration flow. Usually, poor (rural) people immigrate to developed urban areas with the idea of higher living standards. Therefore, urban areas with higher poverty have a higher migration rate and, as a result, have experienced a lower population growth.



Conclusion

The main goal of the current study was to analyze the factors affecting the growth of the population of cities (dependent variable) and investigate the role of political economy (independent variable) in this process. In order to explain the population growth model of the country's cities, five categories of political, economic, institutional, social and physical factors have been considered. The presence of spatial effects has also been tested using Moran's tests and Lagrange's coefficient. The results of these tests indicate the presence of spatial effects in the model. Also, according to the statistics of the Lagrange coefficient (LM) test and the LR and Wald diagnostic tests, the spatial error model has been selected and estimated as the most appropriate spatial regression model. It should be noted that due to the existence of variance heterogeneity in the spatial model, the method of Koljian and Procha (2010) and the KP-HET estimator were used in the estimation of the model. The results of the present study indicate that the spatial autocorrelation coefficient (λ) is significant at a high level, which confirms the existence of spatial effects in the population growth model of the country's provinces between 1300 and 1357. Therefore, according to the main question of the research, how does political economy affect the mechanism of urbanization in Iran, it can be said that among the economic indicators, poverty variables, unemployment rate and specialization, and among the social indicators, the rate of migration and the general fertility rate and the active population, They were recognized as the most important factors affecting the population growth of the country's cities.