فصلنامه مطالعات راهبردی
سال هشتم شماره 1 (پیاپی 27، بهار 1384)

Continuing his previous studies on the Islamic theory of security, the author analyzes the short period following the Prophet’s demise from a security perspective. To do that, using the analytical framework of cleavages and the concept of condensation of cleavages, he shows how this condensation has appeared with the Prophet’s demise. Consequently, the Ummah’s security theory had become subject to internal crisis. According to this analysis, four political, economic, cultural and social cleavages emerged in Medina as affected by power considerations and the ideas of the Ignorance era, thus the essence of Islamic identity was threatened. In such circumstances, just two patterns for crisis management are proposed. The patterns include: First, toleration of the critical conditions aiming at the preservation of Islamic identity that wishes to adjust the conditions from the condensation of cleavages to their intersection; second, the exacerbation of the crisis in order to attain desired objectives in anarchic atmosphere which presents high risks and costs, leading likely to the decline in Islamic identity because of the condensation of cleavages. This analysis is an introduction to the security theory of the Allawi government which will be followed in the next articles.

Trust is one of the fundamental and less-attended issues in social and political studies and it constitutes the basis of the society and social relations. Discussing the sources of trust and its importance in various spheres, this research focuses on social order. With respect to the sources, the article identifies two types of social or sociological sources on the one hand and intellectual, philosophical or doctrinal sources on the other. Two discussions of economic performance and social equality are included in the heading of the first source, and certain moral outlooks, beliefs and values are counted under the heading of intellectual sources. There are three kinds of social order and corresponding types of trust, the establishment of order that corresponds to the habit based on the habitus and it acts through custom, fame and memory; regulating order that is based on emotions and affection acting according to family relations, friends and the community; and auxiliary order that is founded upon trust as based on policy, conscious compliance with the rules and commandments and perception of their usefulness, and it acts according to cohesion, tolerance and legitimacy. These kinds of order act alongside each other and are related with the other elements of the society. Therefore, change in any of the aforementioned elements may affect the subject and issue of trust as well. Furthermore, trust has a mutual relationship with the other elements of the society and influences them as it is affected by the others. Therefore, the appearance of a problem in one of these aspects may be followed by a circle of declined trust. This is a point that should be considered in the formation of social and political developments.

Two concepts of freedom and justice have had floating place in theorizations on political systems and have faced many fluctuations. Liberal democracy theory is the manifestation of the superiority and preference of freedom over justice. Efforts by contemporary Western thinkers, however, to reconcile these two had led to the rise of other theories such as social democracy and associational democracy which stress on justice in creating and perpetuating democracy. From this perspective, every society’s economic conditions provide the grounds for the establishment of democracy. Aiming at approaching true democracy and avoiding deficiencies and shortages characterizing liberal democracy, it seems that in the Islamic Republic of Iran the Constitution has tried to institutionalize a different type of democracy based on religion that is close to modern Western theories, by developing egalitarian mechanisms and by amalgamating freedom and justice. Today, with the new challenges posed by the globalization process, efforts can and must be made to deepen religious democracy by reviving the ideals enshrined in the Constitution, thus the essential task of adapting the Islamic Republic’s system with the changing global and environmental conditions can be undertaken efficiently. For this reason, this article seeks to examine the role of social justice in deepening and perpetuating democracy and making it consistent with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Constitution.

The formation of geographical settings that are able to accept human communities is affected by (absolute and relative) geographical location. Environmental diversities coming from location disparities cause the emergence of different cultures. Environmental capacities play a crucial role in condensation, dispersion and pattern of interaction of human communities. Human as a being in possession of creativity and intellect has tried to create his own desired environment proportional to his environmental capability. This article seeks to explore consequences of environment on human communities’ culture from the perspectives of determinism and voluntarism and to examine the influence of environment and geographical location in Iranian culture. This study indicates that the conditions derived from relative/absolute location, pattern of diversity and disparities arising from such location conditions have made Iranian culture develop certain characteristics which give rise to instability and unrest. Hence, the geographical foundations of Iranian culture are rooted in a kind of instability; an instability that has shaped Iran’s historical developments. The article emphasizes that the formation of Iranian culture has been largely determined by the (absolute and relative) location and that environmental determinism has played a part in instigating such manners as practical and doctrinal despotism in Iranian culture.

International relations field is crafted to study interactions among the states and to explain and to predict their conducts. Perhaps this is the reason why some have described international relations theory as the theory of relations among the states. What is discussed in international relations includes a wide range of varying subjects comprising of the states’ foreign policies within the international system, international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multinational companies, proliferation of nuclear weapons, environmental questions, nationalism, international political economy and issues related to economic development and human rights all of which have a bearing on the state. The state, if not as the single actor rather as one of the most important concepts in international relations, possesses a critical status in the discipline’s theories, and it has passed considerable transformations. All of the international relations theories have dealt with the subject and each of them presents its particular outlook on the nature, domain, range of activity and power of the state,Considering the fundamental assumptions of each of the international relations theories, this article examines the concept of state and its change in a variety of theories in this discipline.

This article addresses the weak points of the dominant discourse in the field of international relations, namely realism and neorealism, and displays that issues related to security cannot be analyzed well in the modern age according to those assumptions. Pointing to the underdevelopment of the international relations discipline and proposing critical, postmodernist and feminist theories, the author tries to stress that these approaches give more space to those marginalized in the mainstream of international relations field in order to enter it. In this line, he believes that these theories, by questioning epistemological, ontological and methodological assumptions of realism, challenge the approach’s traditional outlook on security and have integrated new security relations and new analytical frameworks in the field, by including destitute people, women and the poor as actors in the domain of international relations. For critical theorists, security is often defined as the absence of threat, and it is closely linked with the concept of emancipation and world autonomy leading to freedom of action and true security. Postmodernism also creates satisfaction for those who see the world of politics from the viewpoint of peripheral actors. Within feminism, insecurity is also a gender issue that is combined with the other sources of insecurity. Furthermore, feminists seek to make international relations gender-sensitive.