RESEARCH LETTER OF POLITICAL SCIENSE
Year:2006 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:6

In this article bases and principles of scientific methods and thoughts will be studied and author seeking to comprehend the genesis of epistemological bases of scientific methods in the modem age and find differences of this trend with traditional methods and philosophical attitudes. Genuineness of human rationality, phenomenology, and going beyond of genuine truth, distinction of subjectivity and objectivity, and differences of empirical scientific understanding with other understanding systems is concentrated in this article and author tries to discuss about its uses and functions.

In this article three different approaches on understanding of political and international phenomena will de studied and author tries to answer this question that whether empirical and behaviorist methods of research are the only way of understanding in this era or not. For this purpose after surveying of principles of behaviorist methods and way of thinking, the change of epistemological bases in hermeneutics and post-modern theories will be studied.

In this article, author has focused on two changes in brief and tried first to draw the extent area of "Discourse Analysis", including theoretical changes that spread qualification researches in general which conduct them from positivist pattern to new researches that go beyond of objectivity, look like art traces, and secondly to explain the aims and uses of discourse analysis project. When these two images joint, a researcher face to various patterns of discourse analysis that base upon their subjects and targets.

By surveying the literature on political sociology of Iran, this article seeks to portray the main methods used by researchers to study this topic. In other word, we try to find out that beside ontological (that is the main concepts being used) and epistemological (that is whether these concepts are being studied using positivist or non-positivist approaches) questions, what are the main methods being utilized in political sociology of Iran. We argue that four methods or approaches in studying political sociology of Iran can be realized namely, "political culture and elitism", "class analysis", "Political economy" and "discourse analysis".

After revolution, Iranian researcher and scholars had many works for scientific explanation of foreign policy of Iran and they have tried to use of new various trends and approaches in methological area in social sciences. In this article after surveying of this literature, it will be manifested that positivism is the dominant approach in Iranian studies on foreign policy. For this purpose first the principles of positivism will be passed away and then by analyzing of Iranians studies it will be showed that despite of different views, most of Iranian researches had been based upon positivism.

Many academic works are publishing every year in Iran, but they seldom use a single citation system. In other words, researchers and authors, according to their academic backgrounds and educations, use some different Manual of Style. This article suggests a standard and valid Manual, i.e. The Chicago Manual of Style, for resolving this problem. Dehkordi makes a review the system of gathering of data and citation from Iranian classic text to contemporary one. Then he introduces the Chicago Manual of Style with some examples (in Persian and English) and finally, according to Persian language potentiality, he gives some comments and suggestions to Iranian researchers who wish to use the Chicago Manual of Style.