فصلنامه دولت پژوهی
پیاپی 26 (تابستان 1400)

Owing to their lasting and permanent effects, geopolitical factors play a significant role in the politics and behavior of state. Given Tajikistan’s geopolitics, it is important to consider geopolitical factors and their effects in order to understand and predict policies and behavior of the state in Tajikistan. This is also of special importance due the proximity of Tajikistan to the Islamic Republic of Iran as well as myriad commonalities between the two. Adopting a descriptive–analytical method and relying on library research, the present study aims to analyze the politics and behavior of the state in Tajikistan by investigating the effects of Tajikistan’s geopolitics on the state. The hypothesis is that the geopolitical characteristics of Tajikistan are factors causing tension for the country and creating, directly or indirectly, threats, instability, and insecurity which all affect the politics and behavior of the state in Tajikistan. This has led to the state’s authoritarianism and centralism in the domestic arena and its dominated, submissive character in the foreign arena.

How the government is formed is one of the important themes about the phenomenon of government.  Yet more important is the issue of the dissolution of government.  This paper studies the dissolution of government from the viewpoint of John Locke as one of the greatest political philosophers in the modern world.  The main research questions are, what are the foundations in Locke’s political theology that can explain the dissolution of government? and what conditions should be met in order to concede the possibility of the dissolution of government or confer on citizens the right to it? Locke believes that in the state of nature, human beings have rights as well as the ability to govern themselves.  Human beings enter the political society with some rights, the most important of which is the right to judge the performance of rulers.  Moreover, they have the right to dismiss or even penalize rulers whenever they do not fulfil their obligations, and if rulers go against the popular will, people can resort to force and revolution.  For Locke, revolution is not the worst thing in politics but in the despotic politics.  In Locke’s viewpoint, revolution is necessary to ensure rulers’ adherence to their obligations.  More importantly, revolution is both the foundation of freedom and the greatest manifestation of humans’ self-government.

Khawaja Nasir and his contemporary, Thomas Aquinas, are two prominent philosophers and theologians belonging to Abrahamic religions (Islam and Christianity). Considered as rationalistic and proactive, both scholars discussed religion and state in their works. The question arises as to whether they view the formation and administration of state as an exclusively religious–divine issue or a natural one related to the civil nature of mankind. Using a descriptive–analytical method, this paper tries to analyze Khawaja Nasir’s and Aquinas’ viewpoints in order to answer the above question. The data shows that both Aquinas and Khawaja Nasir consider the legitimacy of state as a matter of nature conditional on justice and wisdom regardless of whether state is divine or conventional. For Khawaja Nasir, the administration of Utopia is not limited to the prophets and imams—who are distinguished by divine inspiration—but the scholars who are distinguished by the power of reason are also entitled to the administration of Utopia. According to Thomas Aquinas, any government that acts justly and rationally is in the public interest and in line with human nature, so it must be obeyed.

From an institutionalist point of view, political development is essentially defined as the process of institutionalization of political power within the state institution, an important criterion of which is the institutionalization of political power acquisition. This paper studies the evolution of political development in the Islamic Republic of Iran with respect to the institutionalization process of political power acquisition, aiming to identify the difficulties inherent in this dimension of political development in Iran. The content analysis of the data collected through a documentary method shows that there are two major difficulties in the institutionalization process of political power acquisition in the Islamic Republic of Iran. One of the difficulties is linked to the continuing dispute over the ‘identity’ of those who lay claim to power, which involves debates over the identity of natural and legal persons, including political and quasi-political groups. The second difficulty is related to the dispute over the ‘process’ of political power acquisition, including analyzing eligibility, monitoring, and voting. Despite many obstacles to access various and valid documents containing valuable data about these difficulties, the findings of the study can provide powerful impetus for collecting more data and conducting thorough research in future. They can also offer different perspectives for finding more effective ways to cope with the difficulties and face the obstacles inherent in the institutionalization of the process of political power acquisition.

Studies on the ineffectiveness of political parties in Iran, mainly analyze the historical, cultural, social and economic factors. Usually, little institutional studies are carried out in this field and the party politics is completely neglected. In this article, we examine, from an institutional point of view, the political party politics of the political system and its impact on the ineffectiveness of political parties in Iran. Political systems adopt their own party politics with different approaches and, on this basis, can make different effects on the life of political parties in countries. Therefore, in this article, the approach of party politics of Islamic Republic of Iran is compared with that of Federal Republic of Germany. The basic question here is, what is the difference in political party politics in Iran compared to party politics in Germany and how do these differences affect the life of political parties in Iran? According to this article, the approach adopted in Iran's political party politics is a controlling and restrictive approach, and this has made it difficult for the political parties to form, grow, and effectively operate and it causes them to be ineffective. At the end of the article, there are some suggestions in favor of good political party politics in Iran. We believe that the approach of political party politics in Iran should be modified in a way that support parties.

After the formation of critical discourses against the current situation in the Qajar period, most of them attacked the authoritarian regime and called for the transition from tyranny to the rule of law. Eventually, the constitution became the main critic's claim, and the constitutional order was issued. However, at the stage of drafting the constitutional amendment, constitutionalism was considered by shariatians to be contrary to sharia and thus faced a major challenge.The Habl-ol- matin, which had been promoting constitutionalism since many years ago, with secular explanations, after the challenge, changed its position and promoted constitutionality based on the idea of separating sharia from the custom.The basic question of the article is that Habl-ol- matin explained the idea on the basis of what basis and purpose?The findings of the research on the basis of the descriptive-explanatory method show that after the constitution was considered to be contrary to sharia, this publication regulates its secular explanation of constitutionalism on the basis of the jurisprudential permission of the Scholars of Najaf on the necessity of the separation of the sharia from the custom at the time of the absent, and as a way of linking the thinking of the modern state and sharia.