مجله رهیافت های سیاسی و بین المللی
سال چهاردهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 72، زمستان 1401)

The five Nordic states are defined as small states in International Relations (IR). Understanding the security priorities and challenges facing these states is crucial. The Nordic states have a very strong level of solidarity. The Scandinavians are strategically influential both in Europe and have a unique position in the North. The security issues of these states have certain complexities. The question here is how did the small Nordic states design their security policies and priorities in the light of international security transitions? In response shelter seeking policies, neutrality, alliances, band wagoning, balancing and hedging policies as security strategies of small Nordic states in the face of international security transitions will be regarded. In order to achieve this hypothesis, the method of the present study is developmental in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of method and library in terms of data collection.Key Words: Small states, Nordic, Scandinavia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland

Iran is a unique actor with specific behaviors in the international system. The paper's main question is what are the main elements of Iranian exceptionalism and what are its effects on Iran’s foreign relations? To answer the question, mixed methodology, a combination of interpretive method and directed qualitative content analysis, has been utilized to interpret Iran's outstanding political and thought figures throughout history. Besides, a conceptual framework has been adopted based on the late Morteza Motahari’s viewpoint on Worldview. The findings of the paper demonstrate that crucial principles of Iranian Exceptionalism are: the “Centrality of Iran in the World”, “Representing the God on earth”, “Ideal king/leader idea”, and “ Believing in the eternal triumph of the Good (Iran) against the Evil (Its enemies)”, “Necessity of Empowerment”, and “ Heavenly mission to lead other nations”. These specific characteristics, combined together, turn International relations realms into a scene of sacred political actions, in which Iran has the mission and transcendental duty to fight the Evils, till the final triumph. What mainstream theories find odd and somehow irrational Iranian behavior, is completely rational, understandable, and predictable via this conceptual framework.

Since its inception, social science in general and international relations in particular have always focused on collective human entities. In the meantime, various concepts have been used to refer to these collective entities; One of which is security community, coined by Deutsch and his colleagues proposed for the first time in 1957. From the 1950s, this concept has been a theoretical basis for many scholars to explain international developments, but over time it has been reformulated; This article tries to evaluate the position of this concept in the literature of international relations with a critical view by using the content analysis of the theoretical texts that have been written about the security community in the last six decades. The question is, what is the evolution of the security community since its inception? The findings of the current research indicate that the security community, having passed through two different generations of theorizing the concept of security community, has a rare capacity for conceptual and theoretical development in the form of an "international theory on security community".

The collapse of the Baath regime and the decline of the established political order, as a critical historical moment, presented the opportunity for transformation and the development of mechanisms to realize desirable economic-social changes in front of the Iraqi society and political system. However, the realities of this country indicate that the situation of Iraq's national development has become more complicated in the post-Saddam period. The problem of the current research is to decipher how the current fate was formed and the logic governing the pattern of stagnation and fragility of the economic development process in post-Saddam Iraq. The main question of the article is how to understand the expansion of the development process in post-Saddam Iraq? The hypothesis of the research is designed in such a way that the struggle of powerful social forces present in the political sphere of  post-Saddam Iraq has hindered the necessary institutional turn to transition from the state of limited access order and achieve dynamic national development in this country. The findings of the research show that the mutual actions of the forces present in the policy-making sphere of the political economy of post-Saddam Iraq have not taken steps to prepare a disciplined ideological and institutional formulation to open the historical locks and guide the economic development in this country. On the other hand, the historical situation after the fall of Saddam has been associated with the reproduction of the past Institutional heritage, the intensification of rent-seeking, the expansion of personal relationships, and finally, the inequality in the distribution of incomes, the increase in exchange costs and the development of a fragile order in this country. The research has been carried out by Historical research method and relying on library sources and texts.

With an analytical view of the political actions and historical events of Iraq that have happened in spaces with specific issues، it can be clearly seen that the most important social forces active in the political arena of Iraq، which can change the social، cultural، political and economic situations by relying on the principles and components of discourse created by himself، the Shia religious social political discourse، which is analyzed and examined both quantitatively and qualitatively. In this article، using the discourse analysis method of Laclau and Moff، he described the discourse of the politicizing matter with a Shiite identity، which in different periods with the specific central signifiers of that period has given meaning to the signifiers or floating signifiers، and this meaning has become discourse and social actions. Also، in this article، the question of how the Shia political discourse in Iraq is all the actions of competing discourses and Can he identify the power and respond to them as much as possible، including his knowledge system and at what levels? We examine.

Most political systems have defined justice as one of their ideals. Naturally, this level of importance has called thinkers to ponder and think about it. Iranian culture, has considered justice in the form of the concept of "Daad" and classical Iranian texts have depicted its dimensions and coordinates in a way that has maintained its scientific and research value until now. Thus, the purpose of this article is to examine the place of "Daad" in the sphere of Iranian thought in comparison with the concepts of its family, such as justice and fairness. This article takes a new look at Shahnameh (Ferdowsi's book of poetry) with an interpretive method and tries to explore the concept of "Daad" from the perspective of political thought. Political thought is a form of thought that forms part of the building blocks of our contemporary political discourse (the language and concepts). And they offer deep insight into the nature of political life or debates in the justification and critique of political actions, state institutions, and public policy. The finding of this article is that "Daad" is a two-dimensional concept that considers both the material life of the people and the spiritual matter, which strengthens the heart relationship between the people and the ruler, popular satisfaction and in its most political form, popular legitimacy. The conclusion of the article is that the new attention to this native Iranian concept and the effort to institutionalize it can be an important step towards highlighting indigenization.

Studying the dimensions and aspects of politics is basically complex, difficult, and controversial. In the study of politics, we are often confronted with different and sometimes paradoxical ideas, narratives, and arguments about political phenomena. Naturally, answering these questions and evaluating the nature of the issues raised requires learning techniques and methods that help us for methodical research. Interviewing is one of the most common methods of data collection, which is unfortunately less used in the field of political science in Iran. Addressing new interview methods, such as online interviewing and new communication capabilities, is an inevitable necessity for data collection. The importance of which became clearer to us in the Corona period. The main question of this paper is what types of interviews have the capacity to collect data and understand political attitudes, and how should the interview process be conducted? The main purpose is to be able to introduce the dimensions and aspects of interview-based research, types of interviews and discuss how to conduct the interview process. Therefore, an attempt will be made to consider the methods of collecting interview data in three structured, unstructured and semi-structured formats, the advantages and disadvantages of the interview, the types of interviews, and the interview-centered research process.

This article has studied the development programs and performance of the vice presidency for women and family affairs until the end of the 12th government to answer the question of what role these programs and their main agent have played in women's political empowerment? The mentioned article uses Sarah Lange's empowerment theory. The research method is qualitative and with a causal approach, and the data has been collected and analyzed, as per development plans law and its performance report, the report of international institutions in the field of women and the track record of the vice Presidency for women and family affairs. The findings show that these programs were Completed and implemented mostly in order to increase the structural opportunities to improve the legal status of women, with a special interpretation of gender justice, due to the lack of power in Iranian women to benefit from the created opportunities, they have not been able to make a significant impact on the status of women. In such a situation, it seems that the application of the five stages of empowerment proposed by Sara Lange, which instead of legal structural changes, emphasizes more on women's agency and changes in economic conditions along with skill-based training, can be a better way to improve the status of womenandIt should be their socio-political empowerment because it is more compatible with Iran's conditions by rejecting feminist views and helps to localize empowerment in Iran.

Social unrest refers to public discontent and the unconventional and sometimes violent practices of individuals in society. This article examines the social unrests of November 2019. The lack of consensus on the application of the concepts, as well as the lack of theoretical consensus on the study of these unrests, show the problematic aspects of this issue. The aim of this study was to investigate the nature of social unrest in November 2019 using a qualitative method. The logic behind data collection is triangulation according to the nature of the issue that has occurred in the past, which uses multiple data sources and various techniques such as interview, analysis of written, visual documents. The grounded theory (GT) method used to analyze the data and present the final theory. The findings include ten categories: protest action, political incapacity, motivational structure, low institutional legitimacy, poorer society, information provision, fattening of horizontalism, aggravation and peripherally of protest. The central category of this research is protest action, which includes the above categories. Then, according to the obtained results, causal conditions, contextual and intervening conditions extracted and the relevant conceptual model explained.

The hostile policies of the United States towards the Islamic Republic of Iran can be seen as having several bills and extensions. From policies of destroying the international currency to approaches based on threats and sanctions. In the meantime, in parallel with the effectiveness of the Democrats or Republicans, the confrontation policies with Iran have also undergone sometimes deep fluctuations. In other words, if the policies of extremist Republicans like Trump were based on maximizing the challenges with the Islamic Republic, the examination of such policies and strategies by Democrats like Joe Biden has been done by insisting on other strategies. For this reason, the current article is a research in providing a reasoned and convincing answer to the question that the most important sanctions strategies of the United States against the Islamic Republic of Iran (with an emphasis on the Joe Biden era) are based on what discourses? The hypothesis of the authors or the central sign of the current article emphasizes the fact that the macro discourse of the United States in this period includes stopping policies, containment by delaying the domestic development of peaceful nuclear knowledge of Iran, destabilizing internal security and public order, disrupting the regionalist policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The article findings by using the threat balance framework, analytical descriptive method and using written and virtual sources, show the increasing cost of the Islamic Republic of Iran to defend the priorities of its national interests in the security-defense structure of the Middle East and forcing Iran to align its behavior. It is with American policies that are formulated in the form of a strategic model. Finally, the authors will try to provide appropriate solutions from the Islamic Republic of Iran.