Ruhollah Eslami
In today’s world, although experts in water management, environment, economics, agriculture, social welfare, and energy present technical solutions to issues such as drought, water scarcity, population aging, pension-fund imbalances, inflation, poverty, and energy shortages, all roads ultimately lead to a single point: politics. Global experience and institutional analysis show that no public challenge is ever purely technical or economic, because every technical decision derives its meaning from the structure of power and the policymaking environment in which it is made. In other words, the crossroads of all crises is the realm of politics, and without redefining its role, no technical reform can be sustainable.
The first manifestation of politics is the rational distribution of power. When power accumulates at one point and its institutional rotation—through elections and separation of powers—comes to a halt, the result is nothing but corruption, monopoly, pseudo-science, and the weakening of civil institutions. Politics, in its true sense, is the “art of distributing power”—the mechanisms that allow legal and peaceful transfer of authority from one group to another, preventing institutional stagnation and social inertia.
Power, wealth, and pleasure form the three fundamental axes of human behavior, and politics is responsible for creating institutional mechanisms to balance them. Whenever these three forces are neither recognized nor distributed in a proportional, balanced, and self-restrained manner, the political system becomes vulnerable to ideology, patronage, and rent-seeking. Thus, politics is the art of equilibrium—not the negation of power, but its regulation within the framework of rationality and accountability.
National-level politics cannot endure without grounding in local power. The pillars of the national state—three strong, principled, and knowledge-based branches—can only remain stable when the broader political structure is also upheld at local and regional levels. Administrative decentralization and empowering elected provincial, county, and district councils do not weaken the state; they strengthen national governance.
For efficient governance, Iran requires a linkage between a capable central government and dynamic local institutions—a state able to integrate national policymaking with local participation. If power remains heavily concentrated at the center, society loses creativity, innovation, and a sense of belonging. A balanced national-local political structure is essential for fair resource distribution, reducing regional disparities, and institutionalizing local accountability.
The language of politics is the language of public interest and national priorities. Domestic politics succeeds when it simultaneously recognizes national unity and social diversity. Iran is a country of “unity in plurality,” and within such a framework, politics must be the art of coexistence—a mechanism for managing differences through institutional rules and shaping the civic life of citizens. Politics, in this sense, serves as the antidote to artificially constructed ethnic or sectarian divides.
In the foreign-policy arena, national strategy must rest on intelligent internationalism. Iran’s geopolitical location at the crossroads of global connectivity means its national interests lie in linking with global networks of trade, energy, and technology. Multilingual and specialized diplomats can help move Iran from a posture of isolation toward becoming a hub of international exchange. Just as domestic politics requires national dialogue, foreign policy requires international dialogue and active participation in global cooperation frameworks.
Scientifically, politics is not a sudden decision or a linear action; it is a process—a policy cycle. This cycle begins when a public issue is scientifically conceptualized. Universities, think tanks, and scholarly associations must translate citizens’ voices into academic language and convert public demands into a policymaking agenda.
Engine of Development
Next, economic guilds and political parties articulate these demands in the form of practical programs and electoral platforms. Competition between visions during elections is the civic form of intellectual and class rivalry. After a government and parliament are elected, the task shifts to designing clear goals and missions—translating values into measurable and executable indicators. Legislation, budgeting, human-resource planning, incentive and deterrent policies, and performance evaluation complete the cycle. Any interruption or omission—whether at the stage of scientific problem-definition or in performance evaluation—halts the discipline of political science and triggers an inflation of ungrounded, non-expert decisions. Politics, in this sense, is the engine of development; without it, reforms in economics, society, or the environment will inevitably stall.
If Iran has not yet found durable solutions for water shortages, energy imbalances, poverty, pension-fund distress, or demographic aging, the cause is not a lack of technical knowledge, but the absence of an efficient policymaking system. Politics is the crossroads where all sciences converge into collective decision-making. A society that marginalizes politics falls into baseless technocracy, and a state that ignores political science becomes prone to pseudo-science and structural corruption.
Politics, in its scientific meaning, is not merely competition for power but the rational governance of its distribution. When this governance rests on balance of powers, harmony between national and local structures, public interest, internationally oriented national interests, and a scientific policy cycle, it can uproot the foundations of longstanding crises. Politics is the art of activating possibilities.
This article was first published in Farsi by Donya-e Eqtesad daily.
