The Effect of the Phenomenon of Factionalism on the Elections of the Sixth Term of the Islamic Council of Mashhad

The issue of this article is to analyze the consequences of party inefficiency and the emergence of factionalism in Iran. For this purpose, in order to increase the accuracy of the discussion and avoid generalization, the conditions of the sixth term of Mashhad City Council elections have been examined. In Iran, many parties have been formed and the names of parties are used a lot, but most of them are ineffective in doing the special work of a modern party. The failure of partisanship has caused real and comprehensive parties not to be formed or if they were formed in the past, they are not active now and as a result the phenomenon of factionalism is created. The purpose of the following article is to show the consequences of factionalism in elections. The importance of the issue is that the results obtained can be used for reforms, political development and expansion of public participation in the society. In this regard, part of the required data was collected by documentary method and by referring to books, magazines and articles. Also, in order to understand the performance of political factions and election lists during the sixth term of the Mashhad City Council elections, the relevant contents in news agencies and websites were reviewed. The findings show that in the mentioned elections, the void of activity of real parties and the emergence of factionalism caused people and political currents to create cross-sectional coalitions, unregistered organizations and informal groups. As a result, electoral competition was formed among such groups.