نشریه پژوهش سیاست نظری
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 2، بهار و تابستان 1385)

This paper studies the structural factors or, in other words, the long term causes that brought about the revolution in Iran; and tries to answer the following questions: - What were the structural factors effecting the occurrence of the revolution in Iran?- How each of these factors affected the occurrence of the revolution? In order to answer these questions, the structural evolutions in political, economic, social and cultural spheres of contemporary Iran have been studied and the consequences of such evolutions in bringing about imbalance, and at last, revolution, have been analyzed in a descriptive-analytical manner.

Why shall we be rethinking Socialist project today? As the answer to this question, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe try to take an active, conscious, and not a passive, unconscious role in the contemporary history. They choose as their goal, a (relatively) clear separation from the conflicts they take part in; and understanding the changes that happen in front of their eyes. At the last analysis, they find out that it is necessary to use Derrida's deconstruction method to challenge the structure and the foundation of Orthodox Marxism.

One of the constant and lasting issues of political philosophy and ethics is justice. That is why philosophers of different epochs and various approaches have dealt with this subject. This article has specifically chosen two philosophers belonging to two different eras, namely Plato and Rawls, who were directly or indirectly preoccupied with the concept of justice. The criteria for choosing these two intellectuals is that, beyond their individuality, they are the representatives of two different models; or more specifically, two opposite models in the field of philosophizing the concept of justice. Therefore, it is attempted to present a portion of their thought on the concept of justice by focusing on the comparable parts of their literary works, namely Plato's "Politics" and Rawls's "A theory on justice". By doing so, we find out that Plato begins the concept of justice from inside of the human being, whereas Rawls begins the issue of justice from outside of man.

Although hard to believe, the distinction between historical Socrates and Plato's Socrates is an issue in the history of political philosophy that has only been marginally dealt with in literature. But the present article makes this issue its focal and central subject. The subject of the article is that, in an in-depth comparison, the political philosophy of Socrates and Plato are both divergent (historical Socrates vs. real Plato) and convergent (Plato's Socrates vs. Socrate's Plato). The starting point of the issue is that through researching and scrutinizing the speeches and writings of Socrates and Plato, one can trace the convergence and divergence in their logos and dialogues. Therefore, semiotics of logo-dialogue of historical Socrates vs. Plato's Socrates, as well as the logo-dialogue of Socrate's Plato vs. real Plato, will lead to the exploration of two basic classical philosophies. This article tries to prove these claims and assumptions through hermeneutic and semiotic analysis.

George Orwell, the English novelist, wrote his famous novel "1984" to criticize the utopias of his era. In his novel, Orwell, always seeking to warn about the possible outcomes of totalitarianism, portrays a man who is subjugated by the rigid power structures and has become a political subject, a subject pushed to his limits. Therefore, the important point here is Orwell's view of human being and its transformation to a subject. Orwell's overemphasis on subjugation gives a metaphysical aspect to human being and at the same time offers him another utopian system. The very system that Orwell previously intended to criticize, now entraps him. In fact, this is exactly where Orwell's paradox lies; since while criticizing utopia, he proposes non-dominance utopia to his metaphysical subject. This paradox is due to Orwell's view to human being as a political subject.

During the last decade of the 20th century, along with extraordinarily fast developments and evolutions in computer-based communication, and also the increasingly widespread access of different societies to the internet and cyber-networks, considerable efforts have been made to find an appropriate pattern for studying internet and the dimensions of its political and social impacts. Among these efforts, the concept of public sphere defined according to sociological ideas of Jurgen Habermas has gained an outstanding status. In this field, researchers are usually interested in answering the question that whether computer-based communication in the net can pave the way for political development and reinforcement of democracy through the revival of public sphere? In order to answer this question, we have to basically know whether the idea of public sphere is an appropriate theoretical pattern for researching this field or not? Each of the theoretical works and researches accomplished during recent years -of which some are mentioned in this article- have taken some aspects of the concept of public sphere into consideration and have used the concept to study the relation between internet, politics and power, and also their reciprocal impacts. These studies suggest that according to many researchers the concept of public sphere proves to be an appropriate theoretical pattern; but except few scholars, all believe that this pattern needs some modification or adaptation to specific conditions of computer-based communication and the recent evolutions in different societies.

This article emphasizes the idea of global cooperation for confronting the phenomenon of international terrorism and it also argues that the failure to reach a consensus over the definition of terrorism is the main obstacle for overcoming this problem in global level. This article also argues that a more effective role can be taken by the United Nations and international law to confront terrorism. The United Nations should fight poverty, inefficient governments and underdevelopment, whether or not these issues are related to the terrorism phenomenon. In confrontation with terrorism, the United Nations should show terrorist acts as undesirable and detestable as possible, so that there would be less motivation for committing such acts. In other words, the crucial question posed here is: what are the main strategies of the international community for confronting international terrorism? The article argues that these two strategies can complement each other and pave the way for more international cooperations.