فصلنامه سیاست
سال پنجاه و دوم شماره 3 (پیاپی 63، پاییز 1401)

Various scholars in universities and research centers have conducted studies on the nature of political system of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI);  and some political experts consider the IRI as an authoritarian regime. In this article, we use the theory of Juan Jose Linz to assess the authoritarianism of the Islamic Republic, given that Linz was perhaps the first scholar to offer a coherent theory of authoritarianism based on his field studies of the contemporary political regimes. He also had looked at  the case of Iranian regime. Using the method of qualitative conceptual content analysis, we examine and evaluate the degree of adaptation of authoritarian components in Iran from the perspective of Linz. The hypothesis of this research is that Jose Linz’s theory  on the ternary components of authoritarianism is unable to explain the political structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The main goals of this study are twofold: a. to assess the place of the Islamic Republic in the classification of types of political regime; and b) to give an unbiased and appropriate answer to those who classify Iran’s regime in the category of authoritarian political entities. Few studies have critically examined the relationship between the Islamic Republic and authoritarianism.The findings of this study show that the components of Linz's authoritarianism do not apply to the Islamic Republic. According to Linz, the components of authoritarianism are the concentration of power, limited political participation, and ideology. Political power in the Islamic Republic of Iran is distributed between the people and the Supreme Leader, who is able to exercise most of his powers with the help of natural or legal persons, or public entities. The leader must make decisions based on the interests of the people and in consultation with experts. The leader's decisions must be made in accordance with the law, but in case of an extraordinary situation (such as foreign invasion or other emergencies) he can have emergency but after the urgency has passed, he must act in accordance with the official provisions of law again. Limited participation in the Islamic Republic has been assessed on the basis of the strict supervision of the Guardian Council (GC) over elections by approving or disqualifying candidates, and claimed to be for the purpose of the allocation of sovereignty to a particular faction or group. This claim is incorrect, because sovereignty belongs to the people in the Constitution, and the GC and other bodies which oversee the elections have to work in accordance with the election law, and are not authorized to favor one faction or group over the others. The Guardian Council has been tasked with vetting of candidates through a qualification process to ensure that they have the requirement for qualification as enshrined in the Constitution (such as  loyalty to the Constitution and believe in Islam, and so on), and it has no veto power. The use of the indicator of ideological governance for the measurement of authoritarianism in the IRI also has two major drawbacks: the rejection of alternatives and the lack of a platform for individual talents to flourish. According to the second principle of the Constitution of the IRI, human dignity and freedom must be ensured through continuous ijtihad as well as the use of human knowledge and experience. Thus, the ground is prepared for the flourishing and diversity of individual talents. For example, in the preamble to the constitution, provisions are included to allow for the use of human experience to facilitate people's relationship to administrative obligations.  In the general policies of the Sixth Development Plan, the creation of e-government has been  prioritized to improve the quality of governance and cope with bureaucratic impediments. In the field of economic activities and fundamental freedoms, government officials and bureaucrats have been obliged to observe laws and regulations in various articles of the constitution, and other legal documents. The authors show the incompatibility of the Linz’s components of authoritarianism with the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and argue that the IRI has a mixed political system of government. They also claim that coordinated government has had a place in the history of political thought, and is philosophically justifiable. Co-governance (shared-governance) is the principle of collective authority and agency, and is a valuable counterpart to democracy.

For most non-academics, foreign policy is one of the most obvious aspects of politics. Most people believe that they have enough knowledge to comment on foreign policy, and this is a main reason that discussion on Iran's foreign policy is one of the hottest conversation topics among Iranians. The nature of these debates is mostly intense and lively criticism of foreign policy of the country in an unscientific manner. At the same time, as expected the foreign policy issues are evaluated by experts and experienced researchers in Iranian academic circles. The two research questions to be answered in the present paper are as follows: 1. What is the status of critiquing  Iranian foreign policy in academic research in Iran? 2. What are the weaknesses and  strengths of  these critiques? In the hypothesis, we argue that the characteristics of education and political culture of Iran have contributed to the shortcomings of the works addressing foreign policy of Iran in a proper manner.In the article, critical thinking has been adopted as the theoretical framework, because critical thinking is the analysis of known facts, evidence, observations, and arguments with the goal of assessing and forming an opinion about certain issues. In other words, critical thinking is a mode of thinking about any subject or problem, by which a person improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them. Critical thinking is a rich concept of high value that has been developing throughout the past decades.  The term critical thinking has its roots in the mid-late 20th century, but its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended because of  respect for students’ self-reliance and the need to prepare students to be successful in life as well as for democratic citizenship. The so-called critical thinkers have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate.To answer the main research questions, quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis were used. A representative sample of papers published in the Foreign Policy Quarterly in the period 2016-2021 was taken. The reason for choosing this journal as the focus of our study is that it has been publishing research on Iran's foreign policy and related topics for many years. Out of 129 articles published during this time period, 51 articles specifically discussed issues related to Iran. 28 articles were on political-security issues, 8 articles on economic issues, 9 articles on political-economic issues, and finally 6 articles had considered all four political, political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of foreign policy analysis. In the first step, we evaluated the content of these 51 articles on Iran's foreign policy carefully and completely. Of the 51 articles, only 23 directly focused on Iran's foreign policy, and only one paper was written with a critical approach. The findings revealed that all these articles had serious shortcomings in one or more issues which needed to be underscored in order to conduct a thorough research. Inadequacies were observed in the following areas: careful literature review to show historical background, use of an appropriate research method, adopting a theoretical framework, recommendations for future research or for  policy choices, attempts to make predictions about the future by using methods such as scenario building.The authors conclude that the origins of the lack of critical thinking must be searched in educational and cultural domains: First, it was argued that enough attention have not been paid to critical thinking in Iranian schools and universities. Therefore, the students are encouraged to accept and praise viewpoints in an uncritical manner instead of learning to be critical thinkers. Likewise, Iran's educational system is such that it does not welcome critical research for publication. Therefore, authors prefer to focus on topics that are more likely to be accepted and published in journals instead of working on critical articles. Unfortunately, the researchers are not influenced by strong personal and scientific motives for fact-finding and problem-solving, and are mostly concerned with  job requirements and other mundane variables. As a result, the papers are not sufficiently innovative since the topics are occasionally repetitive or with little value for policymakers or scientific community. The predominance of the positivist approach in teaching students in universities is one of the other weaknesses that has discouraged researchers to welcome critical works. Thus, the researchers who generally use conservative and non-critical approaches do not seek to change the general direction of politics and help the reconstruction of power relations. In addition to the educational factor, Iranian political culture has contributed to the lack of interest in critical works being conducted and published. Authors’ feelings of insecurity to express different opinions and fear of the consequences of expressing different thoughts have made them to endorse ideas instead of criticizing ideas and policies. Although it is now generally accepted that critical thinking can be taught and cultural weaknesses can be overcome, not enough effort has been made to change this problematic aspect of political culture, which has reduced the motivation for researchers, students, and university professors to engage in debates and critiques in academic journals. In Iranian universities, instead of teaching critical thinking, students are taught how not to get into trouble by adopting a conservative stance which avoids criticizing the views of others. Low level of tolerance in Iranian society for being criticized is another cultural weaknesses, which has led people to be more conservative. Another underlying factor for inadequate attention paid  to critical research goes back to the lack of encouragement by the officials in Iranian diplomatic community who do not think they need academicians to conduct this type of research. Instead of welcoming criticism of policies and programs, foreign ministry officials have sought to hire academics who defend the current state-of-affairs, and justify the existing programs and policies.

Dariush Shaygan is an outstanding intellectual figure who is familiar with the traditional heritage and culture of Iranian society, and has a relatively complete knowledge of modernity and its philosophical foundations. However, what have made his thoughts remarkable are the gradual changes that have taken place in his attitude towards modernity during his intellectual life. In the first period of his intellectual life, Shaygan was strongly anti-modernist and considered it a European-centered phenomenon which was in the stage of nihilism and absurdity; and he was concerned with its dominance over Eastern culture and spirituality. Years later, he changed his views in an obvious way and  recognized modernity as a superior meta-narrative, and believed that its dominance over other cultures and civilizations were inevitable. The main objective of  this research is to find the underlying reasons for the transformation of Shaygan's attitude towards modernity, and his confrontation with political and social developments of his time. The perceptible transformation of his views on modernity can be seen in his books published during two time periods: a) Those written before the Islamic Revolution of Iran (e.g., “Mental Idols and Eternal Memory;” and “Asia vs. the West”; and b)  books published one and two decades after the Revolution (namely, “New Enchantment,” and “Forty-piece Identity and Mobile Thinking,” In the first post-revolution decade,  Shaygan was strongly influenced by the developments caused by this particularly momentous event in Iranian contemporary  history; and consequently, he tried to analyze the ontological foundations of the occurrence of this astonishing revolution. During the last years of his life, the focus of his work  was on the literary and cultural heritage of the East and the West, as seen in his two books entitled “In Search of Lost Spaces,” and “Five Climates of Presence: A Discussion on Iranian Poetry.” In this research, we evaluate these books by using the method of qualitative conceptual analysis.It is argued that Shaygan’s attention to Kant's approach to the critique of pure reason led him to distance himself from his previous Heideggerian interpretation of modernity. By criticizing metaphysics, Kant created a new possibility for a pluralistic design of modern thought. A possibility that could be an opportunity to break out of the impasse of modern nihilism and move to a kind of radical cognitive freedom in the context of modernity. Shaygan's attention to postmodern ideas —instead of the traditional Eastern heritage — as a new philosophical basis for overcoming Heidegger's previous Nietzschean approach, has been made possible by this re-reading of Kant's critical rationality, and perhaps by his attention to Watimo's views. The authors try to answer the following main research question: What are the reasons for the change in Shaygan's attitude towards the relationship between modernity and cultural heritage of Eastern societies, from the perspective of Heidegger-Nietzsche's view of Kant? In the hypothesis, it is postulated that  the prevalence of anti-Western political radicalism in Iran showed Shaygan that Nietzsche-Heidegger's reading of Eastern heritage and the denial of modernity had no effect other than its ideological reproduction. Shaygan reconsidered the foundations of modernity in the context of a Kantian and post-Kantian pluralism. Realizing the danger of the negation of modernity, Shaygan concluded that the interaction between the Eastern traditions and modernity is inevitable. This interaction was not seen possible with the earlier approach based on the negation and reduction of modernity to nihilism. Reconsideration of Shaygan’s  approach was inspired by Watimo's Kantian reading of Nietzsche; and thus, he sought to adopt a Kantian and post-Kantian approach to Eastern modernity and tradition. While modernity is universally interpreted, Eastern traditions are not considered as alternatives to modernity, but as spiritual complement to give meaning to human life in the modern age.

The role of oil, which seems a constant factor in the contemporary Iranian political studies, has been studied in economic, social, and political domains of the country in various ways. However, oil as a strategic natural resource has also influenced regional and national security, particularly in the Persian Gulf countries which are top exporters in the international oil markets. The interdependency of oil exporters and importers has created some kind of mutual vulnerability, and thus the oil trade requires security. Moreover, the countries in the oil-rich Persian Gulf and its vicinity have been experiencing conflicts and wars for decades. The occurrence of wars has often undermined the security of the global oil trade. We try to explain oil market oscillations, considering that the oil market is volatile, and also the supply, demand, and prices of this strategic resource fluctuate. The share of oil-rich regions and countries in the global oil trade also tend to change continually. Because natural resources such as oil are limited, any increase or decrease in oil production and exports in one region affects other oil-rich regions. Since these fluctuations have consequences, it is assumed that these fluctuations affect the occurrence of violence and war in the oil-rich regions. The main research question is: How do the increase or decrease in the share of Persian Gulf oil exports of the world oil exports affect the occurrence of violence and war in this region and its vicinity? To find an appropriate answer to this question, we articulated and tested the "oil deterrence" hypothesis by using mathematical modeling and analyzing the available data.Deterrence theories in international politics are based on military capability as well as other capabilities which can be transformed into military capability. Nevertheless, oil deterrence is based on the strategic attribute of this commodity and its trade. The high level of mutual vulnerability of the exporting and importing countries makes oil a strategic commodity that requires some stability. Given the inherent oscillation of the oil market, one needs to adopt an efficient method to define and calculate its consequences. We recommend the use of dynamical system theory by which both the oscillations over time and the desirable and undesirable consequences can be defined and calculated. The expectation from modeling is to identify the events resulting from the oil exports' extremes and to show the appropriate range of deterrence of the Persian Gulf oil exports. Oil deterrence requires conditions that are defined as mathematical propositions.When we have numerical information about an object and the results of that information are qualitative, one way to increase the accuracy of the relationship between quantities and qualities is to construct a model of the object. The quantitative (numeric) data on the volume of Persian Gulf oil exports and the world's total oil exports in different time periods are available, and fluctuate. However, information on the occurrence of conflicts and wars are not readily obtainable in numerical form. So, we define a positive quantity as a coefficient of deterrence that is a function of time. Furthermore, we consider the quantity of deterrence, which is also a function of time. These time functions are then placed as a state variable and an output variable in a differential equation. The upper and lower bounds indicate the extremes of the share of the region's oil exports. Interestingly, no war has been waged as long as output quantity oscillates within the upper and lower bands. Therefore, it is expected that the same relationship would be observed in the future. This model has been tested once by simulating the desired information, and a second time by using the actual data collected.The proposed model shows the deterrence category well and has acceptable compatibility with the data. We have computed the oil deterrence bandwidth in the Persian Gulf. This model shows that deterrence against violence and war can be an oscillating phenomenon and be affected by macroeconomic variables. Another result is that the outbreak of wars in the Persian Gulf region is the result of bifurcation resulting from crossing the deterrence band. The results of the calculations show why — despite the high tensions in recent years — a war between Iran and the United States has not started, while the United States invaded Iraq under seemingly similar circumstances. Although the region has been the location of various wars for decades, no war has started in the deterrence band. Therefore, the model can help decision-makers in the region to make forward-looking policy decisions to avoid the escalations of crises to devastating wars. This is a step towards calculating quality matters, which can then include other qualities and clarify the decision-making conditions.

Interpreting the ideas of early modern philosophers through the lens of theology and secularization thesis has arguably been one of the controversial issues in contemporary political philosophy. Following this thesis, religion is not simply discarded; instead, it interacts with the worldly sphere, by which some of its transcendental components become immanent. It underscores theological reading of modern theories and undermines their legitimacy as modern. Thinkers like Carl Schmitt, Carl Löwith and John Milbank support this standpoint. The aim of this article is to provide a critical account on this interpretive horizon in the case of Thomas Hobbes and his concept of civil religion. Following Quentin Skinner’s methodological contextualism as method, this essay tries to defend what it calls political Epicureanism of Hobbes as a radically modern idea against theological readings of Hobbes. The main questions of this investigation are: What kind of relationship is there between Hobbes and Epicurus? and, What is the fundamental problem between theological reading of Hobbes and his political Epicureanism? This article assumes that Hobbes’s Epicureanism is fundamentally in contrast with Judo-Christian theology and thus, is broadly incompatible with theological readings of him. By investigating Hobbes’s philosophy and its context, its relationship with Epicurean philosophy, this article draws a conceptual association between Hobbes and Epicurus in terms of their ontology, epistemology, ethics and their attitude toward politics. It also distinguishes Hobbes’s Epicureanism by what is termed as theological lying and concludes that what appears to be Hobbes’s theological expression is in fact an Epicurean theological lie.

American society is struggling to deal with the mounting social tensions between different political orientations of the extremists and the moderate forces amid the increasing likelihood of a military confrontation between the great powers in a turbulent global environment. All of these events necessitate some reorientation in thinking about US military, and its relations with the civilian leadership. The two main objectives of this paper are to investigate the nature of the relationship between military commanders and civilian leaders in the U.S. particularly during Donald Trump’s presidency, and to examine the impact of their interactions on political stability and democracy. Since the probability of a military coup in politically advanced countries is low, it is unlikely that the military commanders in the Pentagon would be planning to overthrow the civilian government. However, the signs of more prominent political role of military elites have led to serious concerns about the negative consequences of politicization of the armed forces for democracy. The research questions are as follows: 1. To what extent have the military been involved in American politics? 2. How, and with what political consequences, had the relations between the U.S. military and civilian leaders changed during Trump's presidency?The civilian governments occasionally have to ask the men and women, who serve in the U.S. military—an all-volunteer force— to perform non-military tasks which are usually assigned to the first-responders such as police, firefighters, and paramedics working for emergency services. The severity and urgency of some crises may require the involvement of the well-prepared and professional military personnel to promptly help the victims of natural or man-made disasters such as floods, earthquakes, forest fires, pandemics, and so on. These crises do not necessarily have immediate security implications, but must be managed in an orderly and timely fashion to minimize the human and material cost associated with them. The well-organized cooperation between the U.S. armed forces and the non-military services involved in these types of crisis management has proven useful.Since the military officers swore an oath to defend the Constitution and impartially serve the country, it is objectionable for them to be involved in politics in order to promote the political agenda of a particular President or party in a partisan manner.In the research hypothesis, it is postulated that military professionalism and civilian control prevent military intervention in politics during political crises and help to strengthen democracy. First, the findings of research conducted by the leading theorists of civil-military relations are carefully examined. Then, with the goal of analyzing the relations between Trump and the military in the 2016-2021 time period, key tweets and statements made by Trump and high-ranking American military commanders about the most contentious military-related issues are identified. Using a qualitative conceptual content analysis, three major issue-areas which had caused tension between Trump and the military are observed. These issue-areas are: a) The withdrawal of US military forces stationed in the territories of other states; b) the declaration of war and the accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons; and C) the intervention of the armed forces in domestic political disputes.The findings of the research showed that the military leaders — due to Trump's personality and governance style that undermined democracy— were repeatedly put in a difficult position, and realized that they should play a more prominent role in deciding on national security issues within the framework of the US Constitution. The military elites were not in pursuit of political superiority.

Afghanistan has been one the most dangerous places for women —This is the commonly accepted view, either socially or scholarly, without any further deliberation. There is a long tumultuous history of conflicts contributing to the worsening situation: the 1979 Soviet invasion, the Afghan Civil War, the Taliban rule, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after 11 September 2001, the stagnant conditions of governance since then, and now the ensuing conflicts. Such description should not negate the partial improvements to the status of women in Afghanistan’s politics and society, though often dubbed as one step forward and two steps backward. In light of such crises, a significant portion of the literature gravitates towards simply depicting women in Afghanistan as victims without due attention to their struggle for empowerment. The article aims to convey how the individuals, often labeled as victims, describe their own situation, struggle, journey, and status. As much as being a theoretical and empirical discussion of Afghanistan and women in Afghanistan, the article also urges for ethical and reflexive methodologies. The findings could be applicable to further studies on the situation of women in other conflict zones.The authors attempt to find an answer for the main research question: How has the conflicts and war affected Afghan women? In the research hypothesis, it is asserted that despite of negative impacts of war on Afghan women, it has also created some spaces for women empowerment. Pursuing this claim, we focus on Afghan women's life experiences between the rise of the Taliban in 1996 and the exit of NATO forces in 2014. Through qualitative and semi-structured interviews with 88 Afghan women in Kabul, we assess the post-war empowering on individual and collective levels. The interviews were conducted over a five-month fieldwork in Kabul in 2019 Within the feminism theoretical framework focusing on concepts like gender, gendered power relations, gender roles, the article assesses that with devastating impacts of the war, there was a seismic transformation of gendered roles. The example of these transformations include women becoming heads of  households, change in views of women, and social changes that manifested themselves individually and within families.With the lesser presence of men and increased participation of women in public spaces, the war's transformative deconstruction of power relations and structures triggers a series of changes in population, economic, and cultural aspects of their lived experiences, and so on. This lived experience is transformed by their meaningful ability to choose, which is how they and the authors’ of this article view as an indication of women empowerment. In Afghanistan, families are treated as one of the core units within the social and political structure of the country. Based on familial relations and tribal loyalties, the unit is constructed within an unequal power relation between genders and is deeply patriarchal. Changes in gender relations will not occur over night, but certain events such as wars can be triggers which would start or speed up the process of change.An example is changed perception on issues such as marriage and related topics as a result of the war. Women are killed and injured during wars, they lose relatives and husbands, they struggle for survival, but a new identity is borne out of the wartime struggles. Despite the difficulties and struggles of the war, the interviewees did not acknowledge themselves as the pitiful victims of war. The majority of their answers could be grouped as expressing resolute hope, rooted in perceiving themselves as wartime heroes who survived the war and obtained their own agency. Changes in gender roles, leading families, immigrations and different lived experiences, expansion of communication and media, raising awareness among women, legal and institutional progress benefiting women specifically from 2001 to 2022, provided necessary resources and structures for increased agency among women. While the dominant traditional discourses still continue to influence women's agency actively, as one of the interviewees said, "literacy and awareness" cannot be reversed.

One of the most important questions raised in the methodology of social science— as compared to natural science methodology— is concerned with the relationship between objectivity and reality. Max Weber was a well-known social theorist of the twentieth century, who tried to find the best methodology for the social science research which had the characteristics of being objective and scientific. As a scientist, Weber conducted extensive research in various fields of law, economics, history, sociology, and concentrated his efforts on presenting a sound method for cultural and social science research. In fact, he is viewed as one of the influential pioneers and architects of the works on social sciences methodology. Weber's ideas as a methodologist of the cultural and social sciences have remained pertinent, and are still taken into consideration in methodological discourse. Thus, a score of scholars has examined and discussed the  nature of Weber's ideas on value freedom and the role of social science, and even  the usefulness of his ideas for the methodology of a given discipline (such as political science). Some have argued that social sciences should be value free, and the problem of researchers’ value-intrusion leading to inadequate objectivity ought to be addressed. In contrast, others have advocated all the methods in the social sciences that make social research more relevant to the social problems. In their view, since the value of social research is to be judged by its social and cultural utility, politically-motivated and politically-guided research can also produce valuable results and be scientifically worthy.In this paper, the author discusses Max Weber's methodology, particularly focusing on the concepts of value and objectivity. The primary research questions is, “How should one defend the objectivity of cultural and social sciences without using the positivist methods?” One can hardly disagree with the argument that social science research must be based on actual facts and reasoning, rather than guided by insufficient evidence and biased judgment. However, it is difficult to agree that the main goal of all social science research ought to be value-neutrality and objectivity. By adopting an analytical-descriptive approach, Weber’s relevant writings about ‘objectivity’ and ‘value neutrality’ in the social science research are identified and analyzed by the use of qualitative conceptual analysis.  The goal was to examine the significance of Weber’s arguments on the methodology of the social sciences, and particularly his concepts of value freedom, value relation as applied to the sphere of politics, in addition to other pertinent aspects of Weber’s methodological position. Weber does not recommend indifference to political issues. The most important finding of this research is to show the relationship between the two concepts of value and objectivity in the study of politics, especially the role of political values in the research process. By separating the political value-relation of scholars from their political valuations, it would be possible to obtain scientific explanations in sociopolitical research.