Identifying Leverage Points for Enhancing Social Capital through Systems Thinking: A Case Study of the Sixth Term of Tehran Municipality

Document Type : Research Paper

Author
seyed mahdi azizi
Assistant Professor, Department of Decision Sciences and Complex Systems, Faculty of Islamic Studies and Management, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran.
10.30497/smt.2026.251544.3783
Abstract
This study aims to identify leverage points for enhancing social capital during the sixth term of Tehran Municipality, adopting a systems thinking approach. Data were collected from three sources: policy documents of the sixth term, scholarly literature, and expert interviews, and were analyzed by integrating the twelve leverage points framework with systems archetypes. The findings indicate that the dynamics of social capital in this period can be explained along three axes: marginalization and spatial inequality, citizen participation and public trust, and institutional transparency and trust in urban governance. Archetypal analysis revealed the dominance of the Tragedy of the Commons, Fixes that Fail, Shifting the Burden, and Success to the Successful archetypes across these axes. Accordingly, actionable leverage points were identified at three distinct levels: the operational level, comprising parameters, buffers, and stock-and-flow structures; the structural level, comprising delays, feedback loops, information flows, and rules; and the paradigmatic level, comprising goals, paradigm, and transcend paradigm.
Keywords
Tehran Municipality
social capital
systems thinking
systems leverage points
systems archetypes
Subjects

  • Receive Date 21 September 2026
  • Revise Date 28 September 2026
  • Accept Date 29 September 2026