The Condition of Payments and Salaries of the Staff and Members of Iran’s First National Consultative Assembly

Iran’s First National Consultative Assembly (Parliament) was established when Iran was in a weak economic condition. Therefore, the members of this parliament focused on overcoming the financial problems and economic obstacles, and they established their first specialized working group titled "Malieh (Finance) Commission”. However, the parliament members faced many problems in covering their personal living expenses due to leaving their personal jobs and having to reside in Tehran. Consequently, the National Consultative Assembly had to find a solution to a new challenge: financial support of its members.
The main question of this research is: being short of financial resources and having no financial and administrative experience in the parliamentary system, what financial and administrative measurements and framework did the parliament use to pay the salaries of its staff and members? In applying the method of historical research, all the necessary pieces of information were gathered from library resources, focusing on the records existing in the Document Center of Iran’s Parliament. This information was processed in a rational historical sequence and then analyzed. The findings of this research show that the First National Consultative Assembly of Iran was only able to pay a small amount of its staff and members’ salary by applying the financial and administrative experiences of the governmental system of Iran. A significant proportion was postponed to the next rounds of the Parliament when it was paid to them or their heirs. The period of the first National Consultative Assembly was so short that the members only focused on solving the country’s economic problems, and its financial resources were so inadequate that they could only pay limited attention to the internal affairs of the Parliament. Consequently the First Parliament did not have an orderly approach to financial management.