Approaches to Monitoring Social Policies and Their Application in The Development Plans and Budgets

Monitoring or inspection has an unmatched role in implementation of successful policies. This is especially the case for social policy, because these policies are more in need of care due to their breadth and depth. In order to monitor social policies, different approaches have been present ed. Among them, four have been more interesting including: social sys tems accounting; social auditing; social testing, and synthesis of research and practice. Given the theoretical vacuum regarding these approaches and their impact on the improvement of social policies, in the present paper we have tried to besides introducing these approaches and their strengths and weaknesses with a descriptive - analytical approach, exam ining the application of them in monitoring the budget and development programs in Iran. Results show that one of the major causes of failure to achieve the development goals defined in the budget laws and programs is lack of understanding and applying new approaches to monitoring.