The Role of Local Management in Enhancing Rural Structural Empowerment for Sustainable Development in Iran's Iran's Arid Regions

Improving rural empowerment is considered one of the essential components of sustainable rural development. However,in many developing countries such as Iran,insufficient attention has been paid to the improvement of the various dimensions of structural empowerment influenced by the performance, internal and individual characteristics,and institutional characteristics of local management in the process of sustainable rural development.Consequently,few studies have addressed this issue.To fill this gap,the present study seeks to identify the endogenous factors affecting local management performance in improving structural empowerment indicators for sustainable rural development. Accordingly, villages located around the desert regions of Iran were selected as the case study.questionnaire was completed from the villagers' perspective to assess the endogenous factors affecting local management performance in improving structural empowerment.The questionnaire analysis focused on the indicators of structural empowerment, local management performance, and the dimensions of sustainable rural development.The research methodology was based on structural equation modeling. The results showed that villagers' structural empowerment is influenced by the performance, internal and individual characteristics, and institutional characteristics of local management, and that structural empowerment, in turn, positively affects the dimensions of sustainable rural development. However,the endogenous factors affecting local management performance,particularly in top-down political systems such as Iran,remain significant inherent obstacles to improving the structural empowerment of villagers.The findings further indicated that if the challenges associated with the endogenous factors affecting local management are addressed and villagers' empowerment is strengthened,their capabilities will increase, enabling both local management and villagers to make more effective use of these capabilities.This article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for improving rural empowerment and promoting sustainable rural development.

کلیدواژه ها:

Local Management ، Structural empowerment ، Sustainable Rural Development ، Iran