World Sociopolitical Studies
Volume:6 Issue: 2, Spring 2022

As the self-image of International Relations as a “hegemonic discipline”, under the influence of the American IR community, is questioned and challenged, the issue of “others” in IR, particularly those in the global South, and their approaches to and understandings of the “international” are becoming increasingly significant. IR communities in the global South are perceived to have different understandings of the “international,” which need to be reflected in IR to make the discipline more inclusive and global. As it is assumed that IR scholars in the more active and powerful countries in the international system have more interest in understanding the world, IR communities in countries known as regional powers can be seen as good candidates for having their voices heard in IR. This article, a comparative study of IR in South Africa and Iran as two major regional powers, examines the reception and application of the Western-centric IR by Iranian and South African IR scholars, as well as their home-grown innovations in order to illustrate the way in which the plurality in IR is reflected in scholarship in these two countries. Despite similarities in experience, their differences indicate the way in which voices from the global South are far from being monolithic.

The post-world war liberal order has been primarily based on the pillars of international institutions inspired from the idea of multilateral agreements and rooted in the ideological components of Western enlightenment and liberal tradition. This orderو which has been established and consolidated by a complex set of regulations in form of international institutions, trade agreementsو and security alliances, continued to function well after the bipolar system of the Cold War, into the hegemonic US-led era. The principal ideology of this hegemony borrows its spirit from an exceptionality of identity, the much discussed, yet disputable concept of American Exceptionalism. By performing a critical discourse analysis on presidential State of the Union addresses post-World War II regarding nuclear institutional hegemony, this research identifies the way in which political identity and ideational elements, derived from the notion of American Exceptionalism, have played a key role in the strategic culture of America, shaping its grand strategies throughout the past decades to create and maintain an institutional hegemonic dominance in the global arena, and in the nuclear regime as a case study. As a result of the theoretical and critical discourse analysis combined, the concept of Institutional Hegemonic Resilience has been offered to explain the dynamics.

Following World War II, the United States constructed a liberal international order that grew noticeably more influential after the Cold War. Today, this order is in crisis, in a way that certain  International Relations theorists mention the emergence of a post-liberal international order. In this relation COVID-19, as the most severe global public health crisis, has created an unexpected and serious problem in the International order. Taking into account this new international order, this research focuses on the following questions: What kinds of order are possible and whether COVID-19 Can be considered as an opportunity that helps China to build international order as a hegemon? In answer to these questions, this paper uses a conceptual model to predict the future international order according to the factor of Covid-19 and the role of China in this order. According to the existing models and with respect to the most important challenges for China to achieve a hegemonic position, we will conclude that the future order of the international system will remain as security-based international order, with two actors (China and Us) and two different ideologies.

Studies on securitization theory have neglected the fact that securitization is in place only when it is proven that expression of fear is insincere. A number of indicators can be retrieved from the literature on deception detection in social sciences to verify sincerity in fear expressions by political leaders. Application of these indicators in this paper demonstrates that former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s expression of fear from Iran in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 2014, was more a case of constructing an existential threat, than expressing genuine apprehensions. A complete examination of Netanyahu’s claims about Iran establishes their contradiction with the known realities. The inconsistency between truth and Netanyahu’s goals, the knowledge available about Netanyahu’s negative beliefs about Iran,  the implausibility of some of his assertions, their judgmental nature, as well as the disclosure of their incorrectness over time all support the idea that Netanyahu was insincere in his expression of fear from Iran in this particular case, and that he was constructing an existential threat about Iran in the midst of negotiations to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, which he vehemently opposed.

The geopolitical competition between India on one hand and the China-Pakistan axis, on the other hand, have made various researchers investigate the different, unknown, and influential aspects of this competition. One of the fields that can influence the analysis of these competitions is political geography. Therefore, in the present research, the researchers have tried to create a new point of view regarding Iran's position in the geopolitical competition between China and India by relying on the sources and analyses that have been done by Indian authors and researchers regarding the issue of China-India competition and also Iran's position in this competition. The authors of this research adopted a meta-analytic approach to drive conclusions from the collected data. Authentic documents in books, scientific-research articles, reliable internet websites and important international news agencies were analyzed to collect the relevant data. The findings suggest that regarding geopolitical access, both China and India are persistently seeking to facilitate their connection to Eurasia through Iran and Pakistan and thus increase their geopolitical weight to enjoy a better position in world politics in the 21st century.

After the fall of the republic in Afghanistan and the raising of the Taliban flag on the presidential palace, many thought that Afghanistan would GO back in time and return to the years before 2001. There WERE serious concerns about endangering the rights of women, the rights of ethnic-religious minorities, as well as the reappearance of foreign terrorist groups, especially Al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan. Considering these elements, many researchers question whether the Taliban has changed its principles, and whether or not the world is facing neo-Talibans. This study aimed to analyze the intellectual tradition of the Taliban with the framework of Laclau and Mouffe's theory, along with discourse methodology. The research examines the central signifiers of the Taliban discourse and their effect on the right of women, ethnic-religious, and foreign terrorist groups. The results indicate that the intellectual tradition of the Taliban is influenced by the powerful Pashtun culture of the governorate, which follows the three principles of honor, superiority, and hospitality, and affects the right of women, ethnic-religious, and foreign terrorist groups, along with the teachings of the Deobandy school.