Spring 2020. Vol 11. Num 1 6 * Corresponding Author: Reza Hemmat, PhD Address: Department of Social Science, Faculty of Literature and Humani tes, Esfahan Universi ty, Esfahan, Iran. Tel: +98 (912) 6417764 E-mail: rhemat@gmail.com Research Paper Discourse Analysis of Iranian Rural Development Policies in the Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ah- madinejad Governments 1. PhD Student, Department of Social Science, Faculty of Literature and Humanites, Esfahan University, Esfahan, Iran. 2. Assistant Professor, Department of Social Science, Faculty of Literature and Humanites, Esfahan University, Esfahan, Iran. 3. Associate Professor, Department of Community Planning, Faculty of Social Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. Mehdi Havazadeh 1 , * Reza Hemmat 2 , Ali Shakoori 3 , Ehsan Aghababaei 2 This artcle atempts to interpret the formaton of discourse of development in Iran’s rural development policies by analyzing the discourse of Hashemi and Ahmadinejad governments in the areas of develop- ment in general and rural development in partcular. The research method used in this artcle is based on the principles of Laclau and Moufe's Discourse Theory and the proposed method of Post-foundaton discourse analysis (PDA). The data used in this artcle was collected from interviews, lectures, and state- ments of presidents and clauses and notes related to rural areas in the context of the First, Second, and Fifh Five-Year Development Plans by purposive sampling. The results showed that the rural areas had been incorporated into the discourse of Hashemi’s government domain. But the set of factors led to the incomplete relatonship between the rural sphere and the discourse of government causing many in- consistencies in this area. On the other hand, discourse of Ahmadinejad government has a stronger and more discursive relatonship with the rural issues. In other words, the discourse of Ahmadinejad's gov- ernment to disrupt the discourse of Hashemi government focusing on physical and external conditons, seeks to improve these conditons. However, as in the discourse of Hashemi’s government, the discourse of Ahmadinejad's government ultmately did not pay much atenton to the cultural and social spheres of development, emphasizing instead the improved distributon of physical facilites. A B S T R A C T Key words: Rural development, Development planning, Hash- emi’s government, Ahmadinejad’s government, Post-foundaton discourse analysis (PDA) Received: 30 Oct. 2019 Accepted: 30 Dec. 2019 Extended Abstract 1. Introduction ural development refers to planning to provide a better life for the villagers. This planning has been implemented through different designs and patterns, all rooted in the concept of development. However, this planning was called progressive interventions or technological reforms. Though given social context, the purpose of these chang- es and interventions has often been unclear and partial, and they have produced consequences beyond the control of the promoters. This study aims to analyze rural de- R Citation: Havazadeh, M., Hemmati, R., Shakoori, A., & Aghababaei, E. (2020). [Discourse Analysis of Iranian Rural Devel- opment Policies in the Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad Governments (Persian)]. Journal of Rural Research, 11(1), 6-21, http://dx.doi.org/ 10.22059/jrur.2019.291602.1414 : http://dx.doi.org/ 10.22059/jrur.2019.291602.1414 Use your device to scan and read the artcle online Copyright © 2020, Journal of Rural Research. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-noncommer- cial 4.0 International License which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.