Documenting Islamic–Iranian Governance Experience in the Islamic Republic of Iran: A Framework for Transforming Governance Experience into Knowledge and an Islamic Governance Model

Over more than four decades, governance in the Islamic Republic of Iran has generated extensive and diverse experiences across policymaking, legislation, executive management, the judiciary, defense, culture, the economy, and religious and value-based guidance. Nevertheless, a substantial proportion of these experiences remains fragmented, individually held, unsystematically recorded, and largely embedded in the tacit knowledge of individuals and organizations. This accumulated experience has seldom been converted into explicit, transferable, assessable, and policy-relevant knowledge. This study aims to design a framework for documenting and systematizing Islamic–Iranian governance experiences in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The proposed framework organizes
the identification, recording, documentation, analysis, validation, dissemination, and institutionalization of governance experiences to facilitate their transformation into operational knowledge and a usable governance model. The central research problem concerns why the Islamic Republic of Iran’s extensive governance experience is not continuously and systematically translated into actionable knowledge that improves decision-making and institutional performance. Currently, successful and unsuccessful experiences are often left undocumented, recorded only in descriptive or performance reports, or withheld from other parts of the governance system because of organizational considerations, extensive confidentiality restrictions, a weak knowledge-sharing culture, institutional competition, and inadequate legal and institutional mechanisms. These conditions increase the risks of repeated mistakes, resource waste, intergenerational discontinuities in knowledge transfer, diminished organizational learning capacity, and weaknesses in foresight and policymaking. Accordingly, the study asks: What theoretical foundations, dimensions, stages, structures, indicators, and mechanisms should constitute
a framework for documenting Islamic–Iranian governance experiences in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and how can these experiences be transformed into operational knowledge that can be institutionalized? The study is developmental and applied in purpose and adopts a mixed-methods approach within an Islamic–Iranian paradigm. In the qualitative phase, overarching policy documents, laws and regulations, official reports, scholarly sources, comparative studies, and relevant governance experiences were examined. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with experts and practitioners to develop a deeper understanding of practical experiences and decision-making mechanisms across five major governance domains: strategic policymaking, legislative governance, executive–managerial governance, judicial–legal governance, and religious and value-based governance. Qualitative data were organized and analyzed using thematic analysis and document content analysis, supported by MAXQDA. In the quantitative phase, questionnaires, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling with a fuzzy-set approach were used to examine relationships among the components and assess the proposed framework. Expert review was used to assess the instruments’ content validity, while data triangulation and member checking strengthened the credibility of the findings. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha for the instruments and inter-coder agreement for the qualitative coding. The findings indicate that existing systems for learning from governance experience face significant structural, procedural, cultural, and technological gaps. There is no integrated system for identifying and prioritizing governance experiences, and many important experiences are lost before they can be documented and analyzed because of leadership changes or the completion of officials’ terms of service. Existing documentation generally consists of activity reports, descriptions of actions, or accounts of apparent outcomes, with insufficient attention to contextual conditions, processes, causes of success or failure, actors’ roles, constraints, unintended consequences, and transferable lessons. Moreover, there is no clear institutional link between the production of experience-based knowledge and its use in policymaking, legislation, implementation, and oversight. Weak organizational cultures of learning and knowledge sharing, security concerns, unnecessary confidentiality, institutional competition, and inadequate incentives further restrict the circulation of experiential knowledge. The information and technological infrastructure needed for a comprehensive, searchable national database of governance experiences also remains underdeveloped. The proposed framework comprises theoretical principles and foundations, thematic scope and governance domains, functional dimensions, implementation stages, context-specific indicators, responsible institutional structures, technological tools, and institutionalization mechanisms. Its implementation follows six stages: formulating the theoretical and methodological framework; identifying and documenting experiences; analyzing data and assessing current conditions; designing the desired model and conducting foresight; institutionalizing the framework and developing implementation strategies; and continuously producing and disseminating knowledge. Anticipated outputs include an encyclopedia of governance experiences, a national governance knowledge and experience database, policy reports, training programs, legal and institutional mechanisms, and a model transferable to other countries in the Islamic 
world. However, the framework is foundational and strategic in nature, and a definitive assessment of its effectiveness requires implementation through a national project and empirical evaluation in governance settings. Definitive claims about statistical outcomes or the model’s full implementation therefore cannot yet be made. The findings suggest that governance experience documentation must extend beyond recording recollections, reporting activities, and providing descriptive accounts to become a scientific, institutionalized, continuous, and problem-oriented system for producing governance knowledge. Achieving this objective requires giving experience documentation a clearly defined place within formal governance structures, specifying responsibilities and processes, developing context-specific indicators for assessing the quality of experiences, and establishing systematic links with the policymaking and decision-making cycle. Accordingly, the study recommends adopting binding legislation or regulations to establish a governance experience documentation system; creating a national center or secretariat; piloting the framework in the legislative domain; establishing a national governance knowledge and experience platform; designing and validating assessment instruments;
and conducting comparative, historical, and technology-oriented studies. Overall, institutionalizing governance experience documentation could help the Islamic Republic of Iran move from decision-making based on individual memory and fragmented trial and error toward a learning-oriented, knowledge-based, and foresight-driven governance system, enabling the production and accumulation of indigenous knowledge to realize Islamic–Iranian governance.