How Presidential Election Results Affect Regional Economic Support in Tutelary Regimes: The Case of Iran, 2005–2013

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to examine the support role of incumbent candidates of presidential elections on the financing of provinces. This is carried out in the case of Iran over 2005–2013, which is seen as an example of a tutelary regime. The research covers 242 observations including eight years and thirtyone provinces. Core and swing voter theories are employed in the research. The methods used in the paper are correlation and regression analysis. The dependent variables are short- and long-term credits for provinces per capita as well as their sum. Control variables are population, share of employable population, unemployment rate, GDP per capita, urbanization, share of oil in GDP, the share of the population that is Persian ethnically, and change across years. The results showed a significant negative connection between support of the incumbent during presidential elections and current credit lending during the next presidential term. In addition, the research showed an absence of any connection between support of the incumbent during presidential elections and long-term developmental lending for the country`s provinces. Two factors may explain these results. Firstly, the ruling coalition may believe that core voters will give reliable support during elections. As a result of this, more energy is spent trying to win votes of opponents. Secondly, the results can also be explained as connected with attempts to resolve social and economic problems such as poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and so forth, in order to win support in these regions. The results show that incumbent could be oriented at disloyal regions to enlarge the number of constituents by the economic development of provinces. The results may be explained by the rationality of voters. However, the results may be insufficiently represeantative as the research covers only one incumbent and only one tutelary regime.