نشریه مطالعات اقتصاد سیاسی بین الملل
سال چهارم شماره 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1400)

The hegemony formed by the U.S. which has been successful since the early 1980s, faced a serious challenge at the beginning of the 21st century, because China was seen as a supporter of American capitalism for decades in order to move toward development and change its position, with a new approach to reduce dependence, more control over technology, and hierarchical growth in the international value chain; it laid the groundwork for expanding markets, taking ownership of them, and gaining a greater share of global added value which will be realized with the strategy of dominating the development of new generation technologies. The present study aims to examine the rivalry between the United States and China based on the components of the political economy of neoliberalism and focusing on the role of the international value chain. We will try to answer the main question on how China's strategy towards the U.S. can be analyzed from the perspective of the international value chain. The main hypothesis is that China's strategy in hegemonic rivalry with the U.S. is to control the most beneficial parts of the international value chain to shape the external environment favorably to integrate purposefully into the global capitalist system instead of adapting. The findings from the study are based on the explanatory-descriptive method that what China has planned in recent years as a key element of qualitative and quantitative growth in the value chain ladder among its macro policies are the influence and dominance of the global value chain by role-playing in rules and technical standardization securing the lasting interests of this country by using the existing capacities of the international system.

Over the past few decades, China has been able to achieve significant economic growth by maintaining the structure of its political system, exploiting domestic benefits, and pursuing an open-door policy in the economic sphere. Despite the common interests of Iran and China in the face of regional and international threats, strategic and stable relations have not been established between the two sides. In fact, the main question is to identify and examine the main variables of Iran-China relations to establish strategic bilateral relations for greater benefits. In this study, with a bilateral perspective from the perspective of Iran and China and using the theoretical model of "interdependence", the strategic framework of long-term relations between the two countries has been drawn. Analytical-descriptive study indicates the existence of cooperation between the two countries in three dimensions of energy, transit and security to form a strategic framework between the parties. Therefore, the main issue of the article is to identify the key components that shape the strategic relations between Iran and China. The basic hypothesis is the existence of transit, energy and security variables as bases for cooperation between the two countries. The results indicate that Iran has three comparative advantages, including sustainable energy supply, secure transit access to Central Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, and security in the Islamic geography. In contrast, supplying value-added energy derivatives, completing transit infrastructure, and facilitating access to finance are seen as China's benefits to Iran's economy.

The astonishing economic development of South Korea in the four decades, since the end of the Korean War, has surprised many observers and researchers around the world. In less than four decades, South Korea has grown from one of the poorest countries in the world to an industrially advanced country. South Korea's economic development is often referred to as the "Han River Miracle"and has given it the nickname "Asian Tiger". Today, it is the twelfth largest economy in the world and has the fourth largest foreign exchange reserves in the world. This study seeks to answer the question: What were the reasons for the rapid and miraculous economic development of South Korea in the post-World War II period? The hypothesis of this research is that the existence of a development-oriented government in South Korea has been the main reason for the development of this country in the mentioned period. In fact, South Korea's leapfrog development would not have been possible without a development-oriented and elite government determined to thrive and develop economically. Such states have characteristics such as having development-oriented elites, efficient and development-oriented bureaucracy, weak civil society, relative state independence, and strengthening state independence. The theoretical framework of the article is based on the theory of the developmental government of Adrian Leftwich and the method of descriptive-analytical research using library resources, articles, books and prestigious domestic and foreign journals.

China’s global role and its influence on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are growig steadily. Therefore, the matter is that why China pays attention to MENA how this region can help them extend its strenghth. By the open-ended conflicts embedded into the region from the outset of the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the second decade of last century shows that there is no room to salve for them and the interest involving of the Western countries into the region highly volatile them indeed. Declaring the US new strategy pivots on the Far East provides China with proper situation to come into the region by virtue of power vacuumed. The main question is that why and how China takes part into the MENA. As ever-growing needs energy, being a bridge between the East-West and the need to receive the new high Western technologies from Israel are the reason why China is interested in the MENA. It is tried to foster the political stability, make offer to humanitarian aids to the crisis-engaged countries and to copy with the terrorism in order to manage opposite issues. The paper tries to explain the Chinese foreign policy behavior into the MENA by what it brings in its strategic and foreign policy conduct development.

Kurdistan Region, Iraq is one of regions in the world that has attracted the attention of the scholars and researchers to its economic, political and social development since 2003. Accordingly, the Kurdish officials have always been trying to illustrate their region’s enhancement as a developmental state for years. From this standpoint, the article sheds light on the extent of the balance between the development models of the Kurdistan Region with the developmental state framework. To evaluate that, the article’s main question is, “Based on developmental state framework, what are the main obstacles and capacities of Kurdistan Region’s development?” To tackle the question, the article’s hypothesis is this, “the main capacities of the Kurdistan’s developmental state features include Determined Developmental Elites, Weak and Dependent Civil Society, and Benefited from primary political democracy features, on the other hand, the main obstacles of the Kurdistan region’s developmental states features include Deficiency in Governmental and Nongovernmental Economic Resources Management, Dependency of the Political Elites and Governmental Institutes, the lack of a Strong and Competent Economy Bureaucracy, Unable to Oppress the Civil Rights, Exaggerating at the Government’s Legitimacy and its Performance, and the lack of one Political Party-Oriented rule over the region.” The findings revealed that, despite the fact that there are some coincidences, the process of Kurdistan development does not adapt to the developmental state model. The Method of data collecting is secondary sources – the library sources- and the method of data analysis is descriptive-analytical. In this regard, some parts of the article is based on historiography and the other part is theoretical based on the developmental events in the region since 2003.

Economic diplomacy, as an interactive action, has found a special role in the foreign policy of countries, the most important of which should be to help resolve political and security issues. Economic peace is one of the most important strategies that the Israeli government has focused on in order to improve political relations and ultimately alleviate security tensions. Accordingly, the present article examines the dimensions and principles of Israel's economic diplomacy strategy by asking what it is based on and what its goals are. The hypothesis of the article is that Israeli economic diplomacy, using the existing security and trade infrastructure, first seeks to improve trade relations and ultimately seeks to achieve political peace. Applying the conceptual model of economic diplomacy with the help of descriptive-analytical method, while confirming this hypothesis, showed that Israel has established institutions for managing its economic relations in the region over the past years. These institutions have laid the groundwork for peace and the normalization of political relations by networking and portraying Israel as a desirable and peaceful actor. The findings show that the Persian Gulf region is one of the most important cases in Israeli economic diplomacy that has so far helped to normalize relations with the UAE and Bahrain. This could be considered as a source of threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran in the future and affect Tehran's economic relations with the Gulf States.

For decades, various parts of the country economy have been get involved to all-embracing and growing sanctions in the economic war of the domination system. In this regard, paying attention to the thought of the Supreme Leader in determining the solutions to the sanctions, taking into account the strategic position of the supreme leader, and his comprehensive view of the issues can provide a better insight into the concerned people in this field. Collecting the required data in a documentary and library way; using the thematic analysis as one of the methods of qualitative analysis of the texts, the current study aims to explaine the proposed interactive approach in the face of sanctions. Based on negative friendship principle in the Islamic fundamental principles in international interactions, introducing two principles of economic independence and Islamic dignity as the focal points of the Islamic society in dealing with enemies, solutions to combat with sanctions, according to veiwpoint of the Supreme Leader have been expressed. At the end, there were three broad themes surrounding the subject of sanctions under the heading of "goals", "coping strategies" and "coping effects". The broad themes of the strategies were divided into two categories: cultural and executive. Then, executive strategies were explained in two areas: domestic and international.

Abstract
Political competition is one of the important factors in the improving society economic performance; the growth of political competition increases the possibility of the presence of elites in the political system and by limiting political rents and dominating special groups over economic resources, forces politicians to adjust economic policies to increase citizen’s welfare. Accordingly, it is argued that increasing political competition improves economic efficiency. Such an approach has attracted government attention to the development of political competition. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative position of the country's provinces in terms of political competition indicator and also to examine its changes at the provincial level to evaluate the status of political competition indicator as an important component in the regional economy performance.
The hypothesis of research is that, firstly, there is a considerable dispersion among different regions in terms of political competition, and secondly, the performance of this type of competition in the country has not been as expected. In this regard, first, based on different indicators of political competition, a comprehensive index of political competition based on the Root Mean Square method is introduced and measured. Then, the status of the political competition index in the provinces during the years 2000 to 2019 will be evaluated. The estimation results show that firstly, there is a considerable dispersion among different regions in terms of political competition index so that the country provinces can be divided to three levels of political competition as low, medium and high. Secondly, the average trend of political competition index is generally declining in the provinces of the country in the 20-year period, whereby it is necessary to create the necessary policies for growth of political competition at the national and regional levels, given the role of political actors in regional performance.

Following the migration of the prophet Mohammad to Medina, establishing the new political structure and increasing the number of Muslims, the newly established government faced new challenges and realities. One of these realities and challenges was the economic life of Medina society and the need for its organization. Accordingly, the present study based on a descriptive and explanatory method, tries to answer the question of how economic strategies of Nabawi Government could transcend the traditional economy to Islamic one and what were those strategies employed in that time. In fact, the aim of this study is to investigate the policies, strategies and approaches of the holy Prophet management in the economic arena and introducing it as an example for real Islamic economy. The results indicated that the Prophet Mohammad tried to illuminate the basic strategies and future of Islamic government in the economic arena based on the tangible necessities and realities. These strategies originated both from revelational and nabawi teachings and based on realities and necessities of establishing Islamic government, recognizing elements and capacities of Mohajirin and Ansar as well as circumstances of new environment and context. Trying to eliminate traditional treats, illuminating new concepts and elements of Islamic economy, endorsing economical basis of Muslims and cutting their dependence to Moshrkin and Ahlol-Ketab were some of the new strategies of Nabawi government. Therefore, the Prophet Mohammad sought to present and put new thinking and strategies in the new economy so as to organize new kind of economy in Medina which is called Islamic economy.

One of the most important goals of any country is stability, which occurs with stability, investment, economic growth and other macro goals; it can provide the ground for development. This study tries to investigate the dimensions and factors affecting instability in the Iran economy. For this purpose, in addition to the analysis of instability indices (economic, financial and political), Granger causality test and VAR model have been used. Instability analysis shows that after the Iran–Iraq War, all three indices of political, financial and economic risk have decreased, but during the last three decades, political risk in the country has increased and economic risk is constant and financial risk has decreased. The results of the causality test show that political instability is the culmination of economic and financial instability. Impulse response functions show that economic and financial instability increases by increasing political instability.

Four decades of trade and financial sanctions against Iran apparently ended during the JCPOA. However, the US government withdrew from the international agreement, under the pretext of Iran's activities in its surrounding area which was based on the realistic nessesities and aimed at providing security in its periphery; and re-imposed illegal sanctions. Regardless of the intentions of the sanctioning countries in imposing sanctions on Iran, it is necessary to identify the effects and consequences of these international restrictions; both the field and statistical knowledge about these effects and knowledge about the sanctioned country's attitude (including the asses, academic elites, and executive authorities). The present study aimed to assess the Iranian academic and executive elites' attitudes about the sanctions' consequences and their effects on Iran's Regional Presence arena. The data collection tool was a questionnaire. In addition to data analysis, this study provided a qualitative analysis of the attitude measurement. The data were statistically analyzed using SPSS 24 and Smart PLS3 to examine the assumptions formulated as the research hypotheses. Finally, the results were realistically analyzed about Iran's activities in the west of Asia. The study also provided a comparative measurement between the attitudes of two groups of the statistical population (academic and executive elites).

Observations indicate that Iran is the latest commercial partner of five central Asia countries (CA). Also, Khorasan Razavi province (KRP) has the most share Iranian export to CA among other provinces, while this share recently has been reduced severely. Therefore, developing the economic diplomacy of Iran and, especially, KRP with CA has undeniable importance to non-oil export increase and reducing the effects of economic sanctions which has been studied in this research. For this purpose, statistical sample has been determined using snowball method and questionnaires distributed between experts of KRP chamber of commerce and Iran foreign affairs representative in northeast (n=25). SWOT matrix was applied to analyze data. Results indicated that, being the hub of foodstuffs production, having professional exporters and nearby CA, are main strengths, low quality of exported goods, marketing weaknesses and exporters negative competition are main weaknesses; plenty of water resources in some CA, cultural communions and CA inaccessibility to international waters are main opportunities; fluctuations of trade laws in CA, existence of powerful rivals and problems of foreign exchange transfer are main challenges of developing the economic diplomacy of KRP with CA. Finally, notice to being hub of foodstuffs production and having most negative water balance among other provinces and notice to potential market of CA equal to 73 million peoples, having high share of agricultural lands to total square and plenty of water resources between CA, developing the economic diplomacy of KRP with CA through foodstuffs export and abroad cultivation of agricultural products with high water requirements were suggested.