فصلنامه سیاست جهانی
سال نهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 33، پاییز 1399)

This article is aimed at examining the relationship between Saudi Arabia’s political system and its religious establishment. Such a study can help better understand Saudi political and social policies in both domestic and foreign arenas. Through the study of the power and influence of religious scholars in Saudi Arabia at the official and social levels, I discuss the approach with which the political system acts towards demands of youth, women, minorities, as well as international demands and pressures for the advancement of reforms. The question I seek to answer in this article is how and why the relationship between Saudi Arabia’s political system and the religious establishment has changed over time. The hypothesis is that the relationship between the two has dramatically shifted over the past century due to the gradual decline in the religious establishment’ independent character as well as the political system’s desire to control it, giving way to the replacement of the traditional “Wahhabi state” with a "quasi-Wahhabi state" that uses Wahhabism as a tool (legitimizer) against its rivals and opponents. In other words, this relationship has gradually benefited the political system, and the religious establishment has become a dependent institute of the political power. This process was consolidated during the reign of King Salman in a way that intensified the religious establishment’s adherence to the political system and making it passive like never before.

The regional security of many countries in Southwest Asia is facing challenges and cyclical crises. Power shifts and the absence of structural formations in international order and the regional environment can be considered as the principal reasons behind the emergence of such crises. The emerging crises are generally of a structural nature and are indicative of the fact the players involved benefit from such mechanisms that are related to extra-structural roles. Iran is among the countries that has continuously played a pivotal role in organizing and balancing the regional security International politics and security in the post-Cold War years have been accompanied with signs of crises and exponential rise in threats for various countries. During this period, structural formations have undergone changes. The bipolar structure lost its function, therefore paving the way for the formation of fluid situations in international politics. During the past three decades since 1991, Iran’s security policy has faced signs of challenge arising from the roles of great powers, regional players and identity groups. The main question raised by this article is “What behavioral and structural characteristics has Iran’s regional security policy had in West Asia?” The hypothesis is based on this statement that “Iran’s strategic policy in West Asia, particularly Syria and Iraq, has been based on seeking a supportive role in confronting the turbulence-creating power”. The “turbulent politics strategy”, theorized by James Rosenau, and the “collective action puzzle” theorized by Elinor Ostrom and Herbet Simon, were used for the purpose of preparing this article. The methodology is based on data analysis and content analysis techniques.

Covid-19 Pandemic may bring about deep transformation in all aspects of human life, including Global Capitalist System as a world-wide economic context, characterized by global reach, complexity, and continuing dynamics. Given to a role played by great power in promoting it, not least during global economic crises, it seems necessary to evaluate prospect of their involvement in it, presuming that this pandemic finally and successfully contained. In this framework, the paper seeks to evaluate scenarios related to capitalist great powers roles in post-corona capitalist system, drawing on future-study approach and using scenario-writing method in which events and actions among them will be traced and analyzed. Thus, seven scenarios, including three one-fold, three two-fold, and one three-fold scenarios have been identified. Findings show that one-fold scenario can be seen as most desirable scenario, since it may enhance Iranian power of maneuver internationally given US-led increasing sanction on Iran. in addition, the paper can open new horizon toward research on Iran foreign policy implications in countering post-corona capitalist world.

The inability of the official Iraqi security forces to contain the crisis caused by the rise of ISIS forced the Iraqi government to mobilize forces to establish an auxiliary defense structure. This defense structure, known as the popular mobilization forces, grew as part of the Iraqi security forces, but the political and religious grouping in the popular mobilization forces and historical hostility of Some of these groups to the United States, as well as the social incompatibility of Sonnies and Kurds with the popular mobilization forces as an Shiite-centeredness organization became a challenge between popular mobilization forces and the Iraqi government. As a result, led Iraqi government to restrict the popular mobilization forces. Accordingly, this article tries to answer this question, that what is the restriction model of popular mobilization forces in Iraq? This article is based on the hypothesis that the popular mobilization forces formed on necessity in Iraq but internal political-religious groupings in the organization and the difficulty of controlling their activities was riskily. This process will lead the Iraqi government to try to control and weaken the popular mobilization forces by downsizing And Create discipline to the organization, controlling the ground mobility of units, and maintaining and using weapons. In this paper, an attempt is made to extract possible strategies for controlling the challenges surrounding popular mobilization forces by using the trend analysis method. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of policies around the research topic.

The issue of the existence of government is a necessity of human social life. The existence of sovereignty, because it is responsible for creating order, security and law enforcement in society, has a rational necessity so that without the rule of society, there will be chaos. Every government has political power, and this is an inseparable feature of all governments and governments. Given that power is the core of government, it can be said that political power in a government when it has social legitimacy is called authority and when it does not have social legitimacy it causes tyranny. The power of its possessor is to force others to surrender against their will in any form. Authority is the starting power that acquires its legitimacy on the basis of religion, law, tradition, and so on. National authority is the product of legitimate economic, military, cultural, political, scientific and technological powers. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of Imam Khomeini's ideas on the formation of the foundations of the national authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The present article tries to achieve the desired purpose with the analytical subject under discussion and by using descriptive-analytical method and by using library-documentary studies.

Almost in all WTO agreements, we are considering the promotion of some elements of good governance to prevent and combat corruption in international trade in order to create a fair competitive environment by creating a conducive business environment. Through meta-analysis, we learned to what extent the World Trade Organization, in addition to the provisions of the agreements, has been able to prevent corruption under the influence of block chain technology. In this regard, the provisions of the organization's agreements and its approach to corruption in international trade were explained and the impact of the use of block chain technology was examined. The study showed that the WTO in the provisions of the agreements obliges the members to observe some components of good governance that are indirectly associated with a preventive approach to combating corruption. It is shown that enjoying block chain technology to set single windows and make use of smart contracts have been considered and used by members according to the relevant agreements. Although the use of this technology has worked well to some extent in facilitating trade, government procurement, and the trade in services, it has led to inefficiencies and challenges in the absence of the necessary infrastructure, which in fact cannot be a viable alternative to powerful institutions that it is created to be replaced.

A neutral view of science is one of the main features of scientific theory and one of the fundamental claims of the main stream in the theorizing of international relations. On the other hand, the critical theories in international politics, believing that the analytical shortcomings in this field are rooted in narrow-mindedness of the mainstream, have criticized the positivist, rationalist, materialist, and hegemonic attitudes of this current. The main question is whether it is possible to bridge between the critical approaches and the characteristic of scientific neutrality, and in this way to eradicate the barriers to free thought in the dominant approach and its origin. This paper argues that the four factors mentioned have formed the most important major obstacles to free thought and emancipation in the field of international relations theories through the imposition of meta theoretical foundations, Purposefulness in understanding issues, preventing the global distribution of issues and finally the commitment to secularization of science. The last factor however plays a pivotal role. One of the achievements of this paper is that it uses an analytical method to establish a connection between secularist roots in international politics and barriers to free thinking and an unbiased view. An issue from which the critical approach is not immune.

Conflict means divergent opposition to several different views which each of them encompass different aims, functions, attitudes and values. The Trump administration announced a peace plan the so called the Deal of Century for a lasting peace between Palestine and Israel. The purpose of this article is to examine the peace plan (the Deal of Century) and to explain the existence of deep cultural-historical ties of the Palestinians with the land of Palestine. The question raised in this research is whether by ignoring the territorial, ethno-religious, and ideological conflicts between Palestine and Israel at this plan, how a stable peace between Palestine and Israel can be expected? The hypothesis of this research is based on the fact that this plan cannot bring a lasting peace in the Middle East. In explaining this article, Alexander Wendt's constructivist approach is used to understand the role of the deep cultural-historical ties of the Palestinians with the land of Palestine in the equations of peace. The research findings indicate that the transaction plan of the Deal of Century is headed towards a failure. This article uses the descriptive-analytical method to examine the dimensions and angles of the Deal of Century Plan by using library sources and relying on previous research.

The GCC's relations with Israel have historically been influenced by the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, and the failure to reach an agreement between Palestine and Israel played an important role in the non-normalization of relations between these actors. However, over time, the importance of this issue has diminished and political, economic and security relations between the members of the GCC and Israel have been increasingly developed. The UAE and Bahrain have established formal diplomatic relations with Israel which is a symbol of a change in Middle East policy and could pave the way for new alliances and coalitions in the region. This paper is going to answer the following question. Why have Israel and GCC increased and deepened their economic, political and security relations in a way that formal recognition of Israel and even the perspective of regional alliance between these actors are more probable than ever. The findings illustrate that the type of relations between different members of GCC and Israel vary according to the different interests and concerns of GCC members. However, most of GCC members have expanded relations with Israel to gain the US strategic support, improve their regional power and counter treats. Israel has also expanded relations with GCC to form a front against Iran, improve its regional power and finally reduce its international isolations. The methodology of the paper is explanatory approach and it concentrates mostly on the presidency of Donald Trump.