نشریه مطالعات اقتصاد سیاسی بین الملل
سال یکم شماره 1 (پاییز و زمستان 1397)

This paper critically examines the new institutionalism approach to defining and evaluating formal and informal institutions as well as providing policy prescriptions for developing countries with regard to two key challenges. The first challenge is the lack of theoretical consensus on the definition of institutions and, consequently, their extension from formal and ethical rules to executive mechanisms and political and economic institutions. The second challenge is the constraint on the measurement of informal institutions stemming from the characteristics of informal social levels in which institutions appear unplanned. For this reason new institutionalism scholars have largely avoided careful study of informal norms. Conceptual scattering, also, has made it almost impossible to provide a comprehensive definition of the entity.  Thus the lack of adequate focus on informal institutions has led to the neglect of this theory of gradual institutional change. In addition, due to the social overlap, many institutions are strongly correlated, making it difficult to discover a causal relationship between institutions and economic development. Theses conceptual and theoretical challenges hinder the development of a comprehensive policy agenda for developing countries. For this reason, some institutionalists emphasize the importance of adaptive institutions rather than adoptive ones.

This paper studies the urban system and the reasons for its formation in the province of Kermanshah. The research method is descriptive-analytical and the data gathering technique is documental analysis (master plan, city consultant, population and housing census, reports of organizations and departments and statistical yearbooks. The results show that since 1335 the population distribution of urban areas has not been balanced in population thresholds. There are no large mid-sized cities and large medium cities. In all the censuses, there was the first city phenomenon in the province, and now, the population of the first city (Kermanshah) is 10.45 times that of the second city (Islamabad (.The service distribution in urban areas with population distribution has the correlation of 0.99. This means that services are distributed based on population and there is no plan to solve this imbalance of the urban system. The political and economic reasons for the imbalance of the urban system are: the first, land reforms hampered rural production and the village lost the ability to maintain its population, and it shaped rural- urban migration.  Second, the development plans through special attention to some urban areas, such as Kermanshah metropolitan increased their attractions. And it caused the urban balance shuffle. Third, the war caused massive migration of frontier population to Kermanshah metropolitan.

The present study aims to understand how the process of rationalization had taken place in the Iran of the constitutional era. In the political philosophy, one of the most important conditions for a country to access to a rational society is the rationalization of its government and politics or the process of rationalization of government in three concepts. Substantial rationalization, voluntary rationalization, and bureaucratic and legal rationalization. The government in Iran only realized the importance of rationalization when the constitutional movement was formed. A movement that led to a break in the Iranian history and created a new chapter for it. Essentially, the three components of modern political economy, legal bureaucracy, and modern law have brought about a rational transformation of government in Iran. It is with this development that the government first emerged in a liberal and voluntary form and then took on bureaucratic, legal and substantive forms. What this study seeks to understand is how this rationalization took place despite the despotic government and rule of the social and economic relationships of pre-capitalist Iran. The method of this research is descriptive-analytical and it aims to answer the question of how the modernization of government in Iran started and continued.

Every society, either primitive or civilized, is based on a political formation that requires to use an economic mechanism in order to survive. Throughout Jahiliyyah, this economic mechanism was based on the instrumental use of Mecca's geographical location as a commercial-religious region, and also based on the tribal economy with such factors as plundering, looting and so on. With the advent of Islam and the formation of an Islamic community under the leadership of the prophet Muhammad (PBUH), it was expectable that his newly-established system required economic mechanism, and also the economy of Jahiliyyah Arabs, which was primitive and mostly immoral, was not confirmed by Islam. Furthermore, going beyond this structure and replacing it with a new one was not possible economically.  Thus, the present study aimed at presenting a theoretical framework to help better understand the prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) political-economy management as it opposed the political economy of early Islam. The prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) management was sublime and we can follow this sublimity in the objective idealism and make it more comprehensible and benefit from it as an acceptable model in political-economy management.

The Arab Spring in Egypt which started at the end of 2011 and led to the fall of the regime of Hosni Mubarak heralded new changes in this country`s domestic and foreign politics. By coming to power of Mohammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood who supported the cause of the Palestinian people and was therefore in drastic opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, it was expected that the Egyptian-Israeli relations would be deteriorated if not interrupted. This expectation, however, was not fulfilled. Thus a major question comes to mind as why the relationship, particularly the security arrangements, with Israel of post-Mubarak Egypt under the new Muslim Brotherhood government was not deteriorated or even interrupted? This article seeks to answer this question using a political economy theoretical approach especially the Neo-Gramscian theory. Our main argument is that the Egyptian integration into the global neo-liberal economic order, particularly its dependence on the financial support from International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the United State Treasury, were the main factors shaping the continuity of the Egyptian policy towards Israel.

Globalization is a concept which is used to describe a series of fundamental interrelated changes at the global level. This phenomenon, on the one hand, has led to the compression and getting close of different areas of human life and the collapse of previous boundaries in all domains, and followed by the influence of different political, economic and cultural sections on each other in the global arena, on the other hand. Today, becaause of the revolution in information and communication technology, the effects of globalization in the cultural sector, especially in developing countries, have become more evident, so tht  It has led to the formation of a consumerist, individualist and selective culture at the global level.  This new culture, in turn, has affected other areas, including politics and economics, and their confluence, economic policy of governments. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to attempt to understand these cultural developments and its implications for the economic policy of the governments, especially in developing countries. The main question of the research is, what is the relationship between the cultural transformation caused by the globalization and economic policy of the governments in developing countries? In response to this question, the hypothesis is that the cultural transformation resulting from globalization by bringing up new demands and requirements, would lead the economic policy of the state towards market-oriented and extrovert economics patterns, in order Coordination with those developments and responding to new demands and requirements. This pattern is export oriented strategy  for developing countries.  In this paper, the method of research is descriptive-analytic and the library method has been used for collecting data.

One Belt One Road initiative of China is the most important megaproject of international political economy in the current situation. With this plan, China pursues major goals in terms of economic growth, especially energy security, expanding its influence in various regions, access to global markets, as well as creating more cost-effective communication and transportation. The idea is to facilitate the supply of energy, goods, and bring the various parts of the globe closer to China. The present paper focuses on explaining the opportunities and challenges of cooperation between Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and China by relying on qualitative research methods such as document observation and analysis. In this regard, the main research question is what opportunities and challenges do the New Silk Road initiative have for Iran, Pakistan and Kazakhstan as a foreign policy strategy of China? In response, the hypothesis raised to this question is that this initiative, in addition to playing an influential role for the future of these three countries, could have consequences for these countries: In terms of opportunities for developing and deepening these countries' relations with China: capacity building for regional dominance, simultaneous interaction with East and West, diversification of onshore and offshore routes, diversification of energy import bases, provision, facilitation and enhancement of energy transmission security for suppliers and consumers and in terms of consequences: China's dominance over the geoeconomic structure of the countries of Iran, Pakistan and Kazakhstan and intensification of competition between Russia, India and the US in the region.

The Arab revolutions that broke up in the Middle East in 2011 and the American inaction in stopping the chain of these revolutions and Also, imposing oil sanctions on Iran without fear of rising oil prices indicated that technological developments and  increasing the volume of production from unconventional sources of shale oil and gas in the United States have challenged the importance of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf in American's economy and have led to a shift in US security policies in the region. In order to assess these changes, In this paper, the effect of the shale revolution and the expansion of oil and gas production from its unconventional hydrocarbon resources on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with an emphasis on the Persian Gulf, based on the definition of three major indicators: diplomacy, economics and military in US foreign policy and use the correlation method is evaluated. The results of the research show that as much as shale oil production has been added to US oil production, the US strategy from active balance and intervention in Middle East has changed into an offshore balance policy and so the possibility of conflicts between regional powers has increased.