مجله رهیافت های سیاسی و بین المللی
سال هفتم شماره 4 (پیاپی 46، تابستان 1395)

The importance of cultural diplomacy for Islamic republic of Iran as a country of thousands of years of civilized culture, based on religious values and traditions, can not be ignored. But, a change in dialogues ruling foreign policy of Iran may lead to a change in the mentioned importance, ignorance, lack of utilization and vein achievements as well. As a matter of fact, each dialogue in Iran provides a different identity which leads to a specific attitude towards international system. To this end, the focus of Khatami dialogue is on modernity while Ahmadinejad emphasizes on tradition. Consequently, values and norms of Iran were approaching international values and norms while a great gap was seen in Ahmadinejad presidency. Based on structuralism, the current study is aimed to answer the question that on what bases were the action and the reaction of the cultural diplomacy of Iran to international system during presidency of Khatami and Ahmadinejad? Our hypothesis is that the affiliation of national and international structures during presidency of Khatami led to Kantian interaction while the gap between them during presidency of Ahmadinejad led to Hobbesian contrast. This study is of analytical-descriptive nature conducted as a desk research.

This article focuses on the empirically assessment of the women’s representation in the Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran based upon the theory of “the politics of presence”. This theory emphasizes on this hypothesis in Iran that “female politicians to a greater extent than male politicians represent the interests of women”. On the theoretical level, the concept of women’s interests divides into three components: the recognition of women as a social category, acknowledgement of the unequal balance of power between the sexes and the occurrence of policies to increase the presence of female citizens in different fields. On the empirical level, this corresponds to measurements indicating female versus male MPs’ attitudes and behavior in areas such as gender equality and social welfare policy. The data for this research are provided from a parliamentary survey study executed among 68 representatives and 135 voters after 10th Islamic Consultative Assembly election in a case study. The results show that female and male voters have different interests, but the priorities of female citizens are given less scope than the priorities of male citizens in the Parliament decisions. Moreover, female representatives give more importance to the women’s priorities and gender equality than male representatives. The main result is that the theory of the politics of presence gains strong empirical support and a significant contribution for the positive effect of women’s presence in parliament and the theories of representative democracy.

Today, the importance of Kurdish issue in the Middle East is more than ever. The rise of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq and the recent autonomy of the Kurds in northern Syria combined with the ongoing insurgency of the PKK against Turkey have empowered the Kurds and challenged the existing “political map” of the Middle East. Turkey and Iran’s common interests in the issue of Kurdish separatists made their opposition to Kurdish independence in northern Iraq and their intelligence and operational cooperation on PKK and PJAK. The tension between the two countries in connection with some regional developments, including developments in Syria had a negative impact in relation to the cooperation between the two countries on the issue of separatism. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of the Kurdish issue in relations between Iran and Turkey during the AKP era. Therefore, the main question is that what are the impacts of Kurdish issue on the relations between Iran and Turkey in AKP era.This article first discusses the recent developments in northern Iraq and later the problem of the emergence of PKK and PJAK and the effects of their armed conflicts on Iran-Turkey relations has been analyzed. Cooperation between Iran and Turkey because of the international system support of the Kurdish separatist movement and turn it into a long-held ambition for the Kurds is essential.

From Aristotle to the contemporary philosophers, throughout the history of political thought, "friendship" has been under contemplation. While at a glance, one might find out divergence in different thinkers' approaches to the concept, Jacques Derrida believes they all are founded on a common ground, namely self-centered-ness and the emphasis on similarity rather than difference, which distort them from their ideal type. Reviewing different narrations of friendship through the history of political thought, the present study attempts to analyze and understand Derrida's standpoint. Indeed, relating friendship to freedom and responsibility, Derrida suggests it is the representative of "fraternity" in national motto during the French revolution (liberty, equality, fraternity). In his view, in socio-political sphere, we are simultaneously always confronted with "brother-friend" and "brother-enemy", and so, we need to learn how to triumph childish self-centered-ness and to recognize the self/other difference, which necessitate the willingness to offer. Friendship is readiness to gift, not only friends, but also enemies! So, all the similarity-based narrations of friendship throughout the history of political thought are distorted and unreliable.

The present article aims to investigate the relationship between the political indicators development and the tendency toward extremist Islam in Central Asia. The research data were extracted after the presenting of theoretical approaches for theoretical explanation of the subject using the quantitative method from the type of secondary analysis and referring to the facts and figures of the political development indicators published on the website of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (2015) related to the Central Asian countries (five Commonwealth countries including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). While comparing the global ranking of indicators among the surveyed five countries, the data was analyzed and tested in two sections: descriptive analysis and inferential analysis. Results of the inferential analysis and comparative assessment showed a significant difference at the level of 0.01 between the political development scales of the commonwealth countries having citizens fighting for ISIS according to Kruskal-Wallis Test. The findings of inferential analysis and bivariate analysis showed a significant relationship at the level of 0.01 between political development scales of commonwealth countries and tendency toward ISIS group. Rule of law and freedom of media scales showed the highest level of regression with regard to political development scales of the countries with citizens having fighters in ISIS, respectively.

Generally, there are several dominant ways to interpret political thought, such as discovering the rational structure of text, discourse analysis and hermeneutical methods. Hermeneutical methods can be divided into two macro categories: Contextual interpretations and textual interpretations. This article, in theoretical level, and with a focus on the hermeneutic interpretation of the text, tries to compare two of the contemporary commentators: Strauss and Skinner. It describes Strauss' method, criticisms against his school, and ultimately provides a description of Skinner’s methodology. To a better understanding of Skinner's critique of the Strauss school, an example of Straussian historiography points out Tabatabai's commentary, and briefly illustrates how Strauss’s method can be applied and shows its possible disadvantages. The purpose of the article is to describe the theoretical and critical comparisons of the two ways of interpreting political thought, which have great importance to historiography of thought. The article ultimately concludes that there are shortcomings in the textual reading of the political ideas that can be compensated by using some of Skinner's method.