Introduction Today, a crucial part of development, especially rural development, is rural settlement planning, which is part of national and regional development. As urban management is a necessary part of cities, rural municipalities are the functional institute for rural areas. They represent villages in national and regional development frameworks.
Purpose of the research: The research aims to evaluate the performance of rural municipalities in the process of rural management. Also, the study investigated the role of rural municipalities as managerial organizations at the micro level.
Methodology This research is descriptive-analytical. First, a library research method and then a field study was used to achieve the research goals. The research tool was a questionnaire for two groups of rural mayors and the head of the household. The total number of households in the ten studied villages was 3207. The sample size was estimated to be 343 people by Cochran's formula. SPSS software was used to analyze the data.
Geographical area of research The study area was the territory of nomads of Khararud Rural District in Khodabandeh County.
Results and discussion The findings show that the formation of rural municipalities significantly improved all social, economic and physical environmental aspects of the development in the villages. According to Friedman's test, the highest performance of rural municipalities is related to the physical-environmental dimension and then the social and economic dimension.
Conclusion Many facilities have been provided for the villagers after the formation of rural municipalities, which is a factor in rural development.