پژوهشنامه علوم سیاسی
سال دوازدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 48، پاییز 1396)

Today, multiple interpretation on JCPOA has been one of the contentious issues before Iran an U.S foreign policies. Generally, we are observing two readings about enforcement of JCPOA: the first approach argues that the agreement has a legal nature and hence, it is subject to the rules of international law. Therefore, two sides of the agreement are watching each others’ behavior under a legal treaty. The second approach emphasizing on the texts of the agreement and 2231 resolution argues that nuclear agreement and its enforcement are subject to political negotiations and agreements. And this is a positive point of the agreement. Employing descriptive – explanatory research method, this article regarding lack of consensus on the nature of Iran’s Deal is going to answer this question whether nuclear agreement (JCPOA) and its enforcements have a political or legal nature. The findings of the article regarding epistemic differences between legal and political studies as the assumption show that the agreement and its enforcement have a political nature, not a legal one.

Diaspora communities have influenced world affairs and host and/or homeland foreign policies in numerous ways including active, passive, constructive and destructive ways. This study is aimed at evaluating the influence of Iranian diaspora communities on the foreign policy of Iran with a focus on the Iranian diaspora residing in the United States. To reach this goal, the conceptual model of Shain and Barth (2003) has been applied. Findings of the research show that there is an asymmetric balance of power between Iranian diaspora communities and the Islamic Republic of Iran in favor of homeland. Therefore, Iranian diaspora communities have little influence on Iran’s foreign policy. In the other word, among the variables affecting this balance of power, only “Iran’s relative weakness in economy” has to some extent smoothed diaspora’s path to influence foreign policy of Iran. And the other four variables including “Ideological strength”, “Impermeability”, “incoherency of the Iranian diaspora” and “the concern of the Islamic Republic of Iran about the Iranian diaspora” impede the effect of the Iranian diaspora communities on Iran’s foreign policy.

This study investigates the effects of the level of democracy on the share of military expenditure from oil income in developing oil-rich countries. We use a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to estimate our model for 40 developing oil-exporting countries during the period of 1980-2012. To get more robust results, different estimates using 3 different indexes for political institutions including Polity Index, Political Rights Index and the aggregate of Political Rights and Civil Liberties Indexes have been done. The findings show that although oil revenues have directly positive and statistically significant effects on the military expenditure, their indirect interaction with the level of democracy creates a negative and statistically significant effect on the military expenditures in these countries. This implies that while there is a strong tendency to increase military expenditure due to the increases in oil revenues in developing oil exporting countries, improving the quality of political institutions may dampen this effect. Therefore, these countries could replace military expenditures with the social expenditures (including education, healthcare, etc) smoothing the path for upgrading social welfare.

Since the commencement of theorization in International Relations as a university branch of science, the primary ontological issue pertaining to the theory of international relations has been how to argue about its area of scholarship, referred to as "International Society" in the English School. In this framework, given its significance as well as ambiguities prevailing among IR scholars, the current study primarily tries to recognize the place of this concept within the English School. Then the article seeks to explore its critiques. In the third section, international system/society distinction will be critically explained. Based on the mentioned critiques, it follows that "International Society" is a deeply Europe-centric notion requiring its de-Europeanization, which may provide IR scholars with a historical genealogy, critically reflecting the expansion of international society, and a theoretical investigation on its future, dealing with the possibility of its transformation. Finally, it will be argued that, on the balance, these two investigating pivots may lead to the reconstruction of the concept of "International Society".

Generally, there is no consensus among economists about positive or negative effects of democracy on economic growth. This study aims to investigate the impacts of democracy on economic growth in 99 developing countries over the period of 1980-2013 using the panel data method. The results show that in upper middle income countries, the autocracy, Freedom House index, civil liberties, and political rights have negative and significant effects on economic growth. But in lower middle income countries, autocracy has positive and significant effect on economic growth, while other democracy proxies have insignificant impact on economic growth, statistically. Moreover, government consumption expenditure, education and population have negative and significant effects and regime duration and inflation have positive and significant effect on economic growth in upper middle income countries, statistically. In lower middle income countries, government consumption expenditure, gross fixed capital, inflation and regime duration have positive and significant effects and population have a negative effect on the economic growth, statistically.

In this paper, we propose a new model for the political economy of Iran. In the shadow of coexistence of modern and traditional institutions in Iran, we have had complex relationship between politics and economy, especially after revolution, so that the political economy could not been explained only by a single casualty model such as rentier state or oil despotism. In Iran, due to the existence of oil and gas resources and their revenues, we face with a special economic structure named Dutch disease in the microstructure of economy. But the more important is the political consequences of this rent in the financial structure of the state that led it to a rentier state. But, Iranian state is not a pure rentier one. The combination of these conditions and features make the government not to show the required rationality in economic crisis and could not reconcile between different requirements of production (economic rationality) and distribution (political legitimacy). Therefore, after a period of careful and conservative policies, we witness the governments entrap by the populistic macro-economic policies. At these conditions, regular recommendations of economic science including polio-financial regulations could not solve the problem. Therefore, economic crisis do not find practical solutions and they will be aggregated and deepened. The explanation of this problem is only possible in a systemic approach named Crisis Model.

In recent years, especially after the fifth Islamic Consultative Assembly (Parliament) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, there has been an argument about changing the electoral system, especially the parliament elections, to a provincial system of election so as to make the legislative body more effective. Regarding the importance of the subject and the effects of different electoral systems and laws on the stability of the political system as well as the orientation of representatives, this research aims to investigate the effects and consequences of the current electoral system and laws. The study also tries to find out how local and tribal identities would take over the national identity. In this research paper, employing Critical Discourse Analysis and recognizing main phrases and nodal points of the negotiations of representatives, we try to represent the issue.