مجله رهیافت های سیاسی و بین المللی
سال هفتم شماره 2 (پیاپی 44، زمستان 1394)

After the collapsing of Iraqi Baathis t regime in 2003, Iraqi parties built a new democratic government. But very soon, the new government encountered with asevere political ins tability, and its legitimacy was challenged by some political players like Sunnis, Baathis ts, and al-Qaida. The ins tability dangerously took the government on the verge of collapse, and near to half of the country was occupied by these groups in thename of ISIS (Islamic S tate of Iraq and Syria). Therefore, here, the ques tion would be why the governmentlegitimacy has been challenged while has been es tablished upon a comprehensive democracy to include all Iraqi people. Many of writers have tried to analyze the ques tion by resorting theories of s tate-building as “es tablishment paradigm” and legitimacy theories as “processing paradigm,” but we know there are many problems in applying these old and inefficient theories on Iraq situation. In the current paper we have triedto bring a new way of analysis by tes ting a hypothesis that can be titled as “recons truction of legitimacy which is an emphasis on his torical process of nation- building, ethno-coexis tence, and diversity prob- .lem کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

In spite of inter-discourse and intra-discourse conflict between Salafi discourse and other discourses, since the emergence of Arab revolutionary movements, it has managed to exit the discursive sphere. The main question of this article is: What backgrounds have caused the Salafi discourse to become a main current and what are the obstacles for its hegemony? By using important meaning-building opportunities such as the failure of Arab unity project, the defeat from Israel, the reinforcement of authoritarianism and the retreat of democracy, moving towards liberal capitalist system, the support of some Arab governments and communication revolution, the practitioners of Salafi discourse have managed to move from margin to the stage andexpanded the validity and accessibility of this discourse by relying on Fiqeh principles, providing a relatively coherent signification system, subjectifying a great part of Arab societies or diversifying some others in terms of identity, and absorbing the subjects of rival discourses. The analytical instrument in this research is Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analysis concepts.

Intellectual tendencies of various political parties and currents determine their actions and decisions in differing political, economic and socio-cultural spheres. Through identifying the political inclinations and intellectual tendencies of political parties and currents, their process of decision making could be analyzed. This research intends to find what intellectual tendency the reformist political current in Iran has. The resultant conclusions of this research carried as survey research, using political compass model and SPSS software for its analysis, reveal that the political tendencies of this statistical population remain within the limits of democratic left or social democracy. The data analysis of these questionnaires proves that these political activists enjoy considerable intellectual coherence. Moreover, the running of T test using two independent variables shows that there is no significant difference between the mean answers of reformist male and female members. So it might be concluded that sex does not have any impact on the intellectual tendencies of the members of this political current. However, the running of this test among the cleric and non cleric reformists reveals a significant difference in mean answers, not withstanding the overall coherence. Thus, affiliation to religious seminaries is of some impact on the intellectual tendencies of the members of the reformist political current.

After the World War II, regionalism and regional integration raised from Europe and extended to other regions in the next decades. Alongside the extension, several theories such as functionalism, neo-functionalism, interdependence, and neo-liberal institutionalism have tried to explain the phenomenon. South Asia was among the regions experienced the wave. So, countries located in the region launched to establish regional institutions. The article aims to study the role of the institution on facilitating regional cooperation at first and integration at second step. Main question is how have regional institutions contributed to regionalism in South Asia. Answering the question, it is necessary to distinct between South Asian great states, i.e. India and Pakistan, and weak states, i.e. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. So, the hypothesis here is that the role of SAARC, SAPTA, and SAFTA in South Asian regionalism is inefficient in the great states view, and efficient in regard of the weak states. Examining the hypothesis, I’ve used theory of neo-liberal institutionalism and functional explanatory method. Findings show that the weak members have been more satisfied than the great members in the present situation.

In 2011 and 2012, the League of Arab States took limited steps in relation to what has been known the “Arab Spring”. While the situation in several Arab countries has been alarming and human rights were gravely violated for decades prior to the revolutions, the Arab League never took firm, serious steps in these situations. In fact, the position of the League on human rights violations leading up to and during the “Arab Spring” continued to be driven not by a coherent and systematic human rights policy but by political considerations. While the Arab League discussed the situations in Libya and Syria through the regular and extraordinary sessions of many of its bodies, the situations in Yemen and Bahrain did not attract similar attention, despite the seriousness of the violations being committed. As our major question, we try to study the roots leading to the paradoxical position of League face to evolutions of Arab Spring. Based on Arabic texts and docs of League, the paper is a documented research.

European modern state has entered in the operational phase about four centuries ago, but its roots back to more than two millenniums ago. One of the best samples of this roots is Plato’s political theory about Utopia. He composed his philosophy as a basis of his political theory and designed a society based on his innovative philosophic views. After the appearance of liberal and secular thoughts in modern centuries, enormous critics were suggested on Plato ideas, like it is impossible for modern state to come into existence unless people deny his views. Writers of this essay, describe their assumptions about characteristics of modern state and then enter in the aforementioned dispute, then suggest the similarities and dissimilarities between that characteristics and Plato ideas.