RESEARCH LETTER OF POLITICAL SCIENSE
Year:2012 | Volume:7 | Issue:2 (26)|Papers Count:9

Taking advantage of the institutional approach, the present article tries to design and propose an evaluation system of public policies in Iran. Considering the distribution of evaluation roles in various institutions and the necessity of a systematic view for the integrity of evaluative activities, the article formulates an institutional model as a conceptual basis in designing the evaluation system of policy. Then, it prescribes appropriate methods and models for each institution and determines roles and responsibilities of the evaluation system accordingly. The institutional model is a multi-approach and multi-methodological model and holds the four factors i.e. evaluation goal, legal duties, policy area and organizational features as the criteria to select the evaluation model. Thus, in the proposed evaluation system of policy, 1) the Vice-Presidential Office for Planning and Strategic Supervision uses the analytical models of management information system, accountability emphasizing result-oriented payment and social system audit, 2) the Majlis Research Center uses cost-benefit, decision-theoretic, goal-oriented, test and case research, 3) the Supreme Audit Court uses the analytic model of cost-benefit and 4) the Expediency Council uses the legal monitoring, criticism and expertise model to fulfill their duties. Also, the need to have a feedback from non-governmental sources and the necessity to fortify private institutes in order to have independent and general evaluations are taken into account. In such system, the Expediency Council is the custodian to evaluate public policies, Vice-Presidential Office for Planning and Strategic Supervision is the custodian for executive and operational policies and the Majlis sponsors to evaluate the legislative policies.

Political crises are not always arisen from human factors and may occur due to some natural disasters including earthquake, flood, volcanic eruptions, drought, etc. A probable earthquake in Tehran may cause tectonic political crises in the Iranian political system. This paper argues that as a consequence of a probable earthquake in Tehran, the political system may face two main crises of authority and legitimacy. From a politico-sociological perspective, the vulnerability of the two factors of "Role" and "Institution" which refer to "Political Agents" and "Institutions", respectively, would engage the system in the crisis of authority. The centralized nature of Iran's political system and consequently the centralization of all political institutions in Tehran as one of the major earthquake-prone cities in Iran, has elevated the feasibility of such vulnerability. In the event of a destructive earthquake in Tehran, elite decision-makers of the system (constituting a small scope) and political institutions (often in the vicinity of earthquake faults) would become vulnerable, while the internal and external surroundings of the political system would be ready for crisis-prone movements. Overcoming such crisis requires some long-term and short-term management practices which should be taken simultaneously.

The human links in social and political groups require the social participation of individuals and determine the responsibility, function and actual and/or idealistic place of the individual. The social man needs political participation to have the state he desires, thus, without an active presence in politics, he would never find his desired place. This study seeks to review the rate of tendency to political participation in Khormoj city and the social factors involved. The method in this research is survey and the data gathering tool is the questionnaire. The population in this study are 18 year-old individuals and over in Khormoj city from among which 341 individuals were selected and interviewed as the sample group with regard to the main variable scatter and 95% confidence level. Data was analyzed via the SPSS software. Some of the most significant findings of the research are as follows: the rate of tendency towards political participation was higher in men compared to women, the more educated individuals the more tendency towards political participation, individuals of higher social classes were more willing to political participation compared to lower social classes. There was no relationship between age, location and marital status and the rate of tendency to political participation. Among variables of the research, education and organizational relationships had the most meaningful effects on the rate of political participation having 47% and 28% Betas, respectively. Using the variance of linear combination of independent variables, 52.5% of the variance was explained as the rate of tendency to political participation.

One significant issue in the political sociology is to study the voting behaviour of people in different elections. For political sociologists, a country like the Islamic Republic of Iran which holds at least one election each year can be an interesting case study, however, there are unfortunately few quantitative studies conducted on elections in Iran in the last three decades. A main advantage of quantitative studies on elections is that having reviewed the past election procedures, one may forecast the results of elections to be held in future. Concentrating on the social bases in Iran and assuming the existence of a relationship between "social base" and "voting behavior", this article seeks to answer the following question: "how could understanding the social bases in Iran during the 9th Presidential election provide the ground for candidates to forecast voters' behaviour?". Our main hypothesis is that understanding the social bases which are scattered nationwide based on the income, occupation and education could facilitate forecasting of the behaviour by voters in the 9th Presidential election for policymakers and candidates. Arguing that various variables are affecting the manner of electing candidates in the election, this article emphasizes that considering the economic and social situation of the country in the election of 2005 and the dominant environment of the society, as well as understanding the social bases at that period of time, could show the needs and demands of each social base in a more tangible manner and candidates could win the election by focusing on these demands.

The interaction between sports and politics in the new age has become an important issue. Various governments try to take advantages of the capacities as well as opportunities sport provides with different manners. The most important political function of sports, specifically soccer, is to control and direct the public opinion, demonstrate an efficient face of the government and finally to help the process of nation-building. However, soccer has been used not only by national governments, but minorities and ethnic groups also try to take advantage of the high potential of this sport in demonstrating their opposition to the governments and/or strengthening their ethnical convergence. The Islamic Republic of Iran has also taken advantages of the capacity of the national soccer, in some cases, to strengthen the national convergence and identity. This article seeks to present a theoretical analysis over the relationship between sports and politics and it studies a soccer team, the Tabrizi Tractorsazi, based on some mottos and expressions by its political-sport fans and it argues that the Pan Turk racist trend is willing to take advantages of the club soccer to establish a definition of Azeri identity as "the resistance identity" and place it opposed to Iranian national identity.

In this article we seek to study terrorism as a new social movement (NSM) with a sociological approach while criticizing the approaches used by other disciplines such as psychology, political science and law to study this issue. Our main arguments is that since terrorism in all around the world is a social and identity phenomenon rather than political and military one, therefore "New Terrorism" may be considered as a counter new social movement which is challenging liberal democracy in modern politics. The simultaneity of expanding terrorism on the one hand and dominating democratic systems and civil society on the other may be said to show new forms of resistance by minorities. The scholars in the discipline of sociology have two general views about terrorism: one is that democracy can bring security back in the global society while the other is that democracy itself produces tension and terrorism. In this article, we seek to argue that the terrorist movements can be said to be mainly against some kind of democratic systems.

Among states who have accepted the Islamic Republic as their governmental framework, we seek to do a comparative study of Mauritania, as the innovator of such a system, Iran and Afghanistan, regarding their approach towards Islam and its influence on the legal system. Pakistan and Comoro have the same Islamic governmental system but are not considered in this study since it is very difficult to compare five countries in an article. Iran, Afghanistan and Mauritania have considerable distinctions despite their common points including the official religion, necessity to adjust laws with Islamic principles and the condition of being Muslim to become president, an issue arisen from two different perspectives while having common belief in Islamic values: a perspective interpreted in Iran as "the maximum presence of religion in the society" and therefore the legal system, and in Mauritania and Afghanistan as "the balance among Islamic teachings, democracy and human rights". Our main argument in this article is that the governmental/state framework of the Islamic republic is capable of maximum compatibility with democratic musts and international human rights requirements and it may be called the integration of religion and democracy.