A Relational Framework to Explain the Town’s Local Actors Decision-Making Mechanism

The life of Towns has become more important and greatly emphasized in recent years and this heralds the arrival of a new era when this type of settlements is introduced as major living and investment capacities. Therefore, it is necessary to study the different aspects of towns in order to plan and manage their development and answer the question about different decision-making mechanism in them. In the present study, after explaining the place and role of towns in the development transition period, the local governance mechanism is introduced as the main issue of such cities through a qualitative radial model literature review. By examining several recent studies on towns, it is found that the type of relations between individuals and actors on the one hand, and the impact of their activities and functions on the decisions made on national and regional scales on the other hand, create a different form of local governance mechanism in these cities than in large cities. Accordingly, the existing recognition and analysis processes and tools, that are primarily designed to assess the conditions of large cities, cannot be used. According to the present study, the decision-making mechanism can be an appropriate structure for expressing the complex relationships between actors in towns. As a result, a relational framework can be introduced to explain the decision-making mechanism in the local governance process of towns. This framework is designed based on the general international literature and experiences and can serve as a preliminary tool used for the identification and examination of the administrative mechanisms in towns and be modified and improved in various fields through future researches.