فصلنامه دولت پژوهی
پیاپی 27 (پاییز 1400)

Decolonization, as a form of establishing sovereign states, is one of the important phenomena of the twentieth century, although its roots can be traced back to the nineteenth century. The increase in the number of UN member states from 51 in 1945 to 149 in 1984 was largely due to decolonization. While colonizers would refer to colonies as part of their own territories and refuse to grant them independence for a long time, from the late 1950s, the UN began to take important measures to accelerate the process of decolonization. This led to the adoption of UN resolution 1514 of December 1960, which recognized the right to self-determination of colonies as a binding rule in the international legal system. The main question of this article is, what processes transformed decolonization from a political ideal into a legal norm? As descriptive research, the present study used library and Internet resources. The analysis of the decolonization process shows that despite the resistance of colonizing states and the failure to include the right of colonies to attain independence in the UN Charter, the right to self-determination of colonies has become an imperative rule in international law owing to liberation movements as well as the support from socialist and the Third World states in the UN General Assembly. As a result, decolonization has been considered one of the most important ways of establishing new states in the international arena.

It is a common assumption that the government’s responsibility in policy-making is to formulate official policies and pave the way for achieving specified objectives. However, little attention has be paid to encouraging citizen participation and inspiring an individual sense of responsibility towards achieving large-scale policy objectives. In fact, most policy objectives cannot be achieved—at least not efficiently—without an individual sense of responsibility on the part of citizens. The question is, how can the government increase citizen participation and help them take on responsibility towards achieving policy objectives? To answer the question, this article argues that the government has to empower citizens. Empowered citizens are able to make optimal decisions under different circumstances, which can improve the quality of one’s life and society. In this respect, this paper recognizes the key role of behavior change policy-making which refers to government interventions to empower citizens and encourage citizen participation. Behavior changes policy-making influences citizens’ beliefs, awareness, and behavior, making them compatible with large-scale government policies. The present study argues that citizen empowerment through behavior change policy-making can get citizens to take on responsibility towards achieving large-scale policy objectives. Besides large-scale policy-making in various areas, it is thus necessary for the government to consider behavior change policy-making in order to get citizen participation in achieving the objectives in a given area. The present study employed rational choice theory as the theoretical framework as research on behavior change emphasizes that an individual acts based on cost–benefit analysis.

Gender policy in contemporary Iran has experienced many fluctuations, but it has generally brought about significant changes in the status of women. The question of this article is focused on political factors, especially the role of state, in these changes. Using a historical–comparative method, the present research shows that gender policy in contemporary Iran was influenced by three variables: the strength of the women’s movement, the state’s tendencies, and other positions of social forces. Moreover, gender policy has emerged under three distinct paradigms. First, the conservative paradigm, which stemmed from the weakness of the women’s movement concomitant with the traditionalist state as well as the resistance of conservative forces, has not succeeded to make considerable changes to the status of women. This paradigm can be seen in the years preceding the constitutional movement (1891–1905), during 1941–1951 (the 1320s Solar Hijri), and in some periods following the Islamic Revolution (1981–1988). The second paradigm, called authoritarian reform, resulted from the weakness of the women’s movement concomitant with the authoritarian state as well as the diminished resistance of conservative forces. This paradigm, seen in the years 1921–1941 and 1963–1978, caused significant changes in the legal status of women. Not accompanied by the participation of women, these changes could not firmly entrench themselves and at times relapsed into the previous stage. Third, the paradigm of democratic reform resulted from the women’s movement concomitant with the reformist state as well as the balance between modern and traditional social forces. This paradigm emerged in the early years following the constitutional movement and in the two post-Revolutionary periods known as construction and reformist, introducing relatively profound and lasting changes to the status of women.

As one of the substantial factors influencing the persuasion of social structure during great crises, social capital plays a vital role in accelerating the implementation and effectiveness of policies adopted to control crisis. In this respect, this study aimed to examine the role of social capital in the level of satisfaction with government performance in COVID–19 control policy-making. The statistical population of the study comprised all citizens of Tehran. The Cochrane formula was used to determine the sample size, which amounted to 400. The study relied on multistage cluster sampling to choose the participants in 22 districts of Tehran in Iran. Having been collected by a researcher-made questionnaire, the data was processed through SPSS software with one-sample t-tests, Pearson Correlation, multivariate linear regression, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The findings indicate that citizens living in Tehran have a moderate level of satisfaction with government performance in controlling COVID–19. Moreover, the lowest satisfaction mean value was associated with supply chain management and access to health items while the highest mean value of satisfaction pertained to the constraints and social distancing. There was a high correlation between the variable of social capital and satisfaction with government performance in COVID–19 control (R=0.552), and it can predict 30.3% of satisfaction variances. The results show that the variable of trust was the most important predictor of satisfaction with government performance in  COVID–19 control.

Prior to the 2011 Egyptian revolution, scholars would assess the state–society relations in Egypt in the age of globalization as ineffective, considering any change impossible. However, popular movements in the Middle East and the easy collapse of state indicated that the state–society relation was not passive. In an attempt to re-examine state–society relations, this research focuses on why and how the state–society relations in Egypt, which had been based on authoritarian hegemony, underwent rupture and crisis. Moreover, it tries to explain how the state has managed to deal with the transformation of civil society. The findings show that despite the state’s incomplete and reductionist approach to globalization, the decrease in the state control over economy, in public services and the increase in inequality crisis all have led to class divisions, unemployment, and inflation. The loss of the elements integral to state hegemony led to the emergence of discontented and insurgent political subjects, which made the state insist on its repressive, non-ideological, and undemocratic functions. Due to the weakness in reproducing its power in civil society and the failure to realize the change in the subject’s sensibility–behavior schemata, the state failed in the face of the immediate movement of people, and emerging sociopolitical forces overthrew the state with the help of new media facilities.

This paper aims to understand the nature and causes of fragility of bureaucracy in Iran from the perspective of political economy. Starting from the presupposition that bureaucracy crisis is first and foremost the reflection of the nature of state and its structure of capital accumulation, the present research argues that the twofold nature of Sultanist–rentier state in the second Pahlavi period gradually caused the structure–role distortion of bureaucracy, a decline both in the quality of bureaucratic elites and in the relative autonomy of bureaucrats from politics, the predominance of prebendal spirit and morality, the growth of bureaucratic bourgeoisie, and finally the emergence of a fragile bureaucracy which, in Weberian terms, intermediated between the Sultan and society. Such an intermediary position of bureaucracy exacerbated the crisis of legitimacy of power elites since bureaucracy not only lost its modernist spirit but also later turned into an obstacle to modernization. This situation eventually led to the inability of bureaucracy in performing its intermediary role and making a compromise and balance between the interests of state and social classes on the one hand and to the function of bureaucracy as a factor contributing to the dialectic of state and society, a delay in political development in society, and the facilitation of revolution on the other hand.

Modernization of governance and the attainment of collective enthusiasm and participation in political decision-making began since the fundamental shift of sovereignty from the Sultan to people. The modern state, as a descendant of ancient forms of governance, defines its sovereignty based on human wisdom rather than spiritual sources. As a claimant to the divine and popular sovereignty, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI)—within the Constitutional Law—has recognized its own political–legal framework based on revelation and jurisprudence. Yet as a political entity in international politics and relations, the IRI cannot remain indifferent to the necessities of the modern world, especially when it comes to political and legal systematization. As a result, the IRI has also used modern methods of governance to organize the country legally and politically as well as to manage public affairs. Since state and modernity are pluralistic phenomena in intellectual and political systems, there are differences in the way the components of the Modern are recognized. Taking this as its central topic, the present study used a descriptive–explanatory and prescriptive approach as well as the library data to analyze the constituting components of state. The main finding is the fact that the difference lies in the normative basis and genesis of the two legal systems.