RESEARCH LETTER OF POLITICAL SCIENSE
Year:2008 | Volume:3 | Issue:2 (10)|Papers Count:7

In a world, where globalization and industrial as well as technological progress are the most frequently heard voices, the Persian Gulf yet remains as an outstanding region for the most precious strategic reserves of the world. The Persian Gulf harbors as the biggest reserves of the world are a major center for producing oil and natural gas of the world. Such a great importance has turned the Persian Gulf region into a hotbed for international tension resulting in the presence of big powers particularly the United States in the region, thus endangering the security there. Occupying Iraq in a military campaign, the United States is pursuing a lot of interests in the Persian Gulf region including access to the cheap energy resources of the Persian Gulf region, preventing the domination of other powers over the region and ensuring the security of its regional allies. After all, ensuring the free and stable transfer of oil to other parts of the world is viewed as one of the prime and basic interests of the United States in the Persian Gulf region. Meanwhile, the US reluctance to leave Iraq is seen as a policy to meet such interests. Unfortunately, the Persian Gulf region is the source of clashes among governments, ethnic rivalries, Islamic fundamentalism, internal instability and the absence of balance of power at domestic level. On a global scale, the intervention of foreign powers has fueled tensions in the region. A deliberate initiative is required for the Persian Gulf region to weather the ongoing crisis and ensure its regional security in the future. Reviewing the presence of the US in the region and the initiatives made by this country, the present essay aims at designing a certain order for the Persian Gulf region so as to ensure its security.

A true understanding of the concepts of "power" and "hegemony" is quite necessary. These concepts are of very high importance as far as the U.S is concerned since this country has left much influence on the process of the developments of the global system of political economy and is still the most influential country in this regard. Various hypotheses have sought to find out and present a new hegemony i.e., a beyond-national global capital hegemony or some return to US hegemony. The latter is variously termed as American hegemony seeking, American hegemonic reconstruction, or American hegemonic stabilization. However, without the above-mentioned conception we may not have a good judgment whether these hypotheses are "realist" or "idealist". So in the context of International Political Economy (IPE) and the literature available in this field of study, the present article seeks to synthesize the concept of hegemony in the Neo-liberal Institutionalist paradigm based on the interdependency principle and in the Gramscian materialist one. Having presented some deficiencies in these conceptualizations, the article explains multilateralism as the fundamental principle of hegemony. Thus whether we consider the necessity of pluralist cooperation presented by Neo-liberal institutionalists in the post-hegemonic order era or the concept of capital transnational hegemony presented by the Gramscian School as a criterion for analyzing the global political economic system, multilateralism principle would be the foundation of this synthesis. Consequently any attempt towards the emergence of some new hegemony, reconstruction of US hegemony, or its stabilization in the global political economic system would be fruitless in default of multilateralism.

The legislative power in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based on three bodies: Majlis (Islamic Consultative Assembly), the Guardian Council and the Nation's Exigency Council. The Islamic Consultative Assembly has two fundamental functions: legislation and supervision over the power structure. When we speak about the nature and quality of the role of Majlis in Iran's foreign relations, there are two points: the conceptual separation between foreign relations and foreign policy; the triangle of the process of decision-making, decision-taking and the state's passive acceptance of decisions. Generally it seems the Islamic Republic of Iran has foreign relations, not foreign policy in the international system. So there is a state of passive compliance with the political decisions of other states. Iran has little active and offensive participation in the field of foreign relations. This general characteristic in the system of the constitutional law of Iran has given rise to the emergence of passive, inoffensive, disfunctional, and unequal functions for Majlis in the atmosphere of Iran's foreign relations. Since "foreign relations" is a complex entity interlocked with security indices, Islamic Consultative Assembly has not been able to depart from its generalistic role and proceed to a specific one, thus not having an important part in the field of decision making in foreign relations. Adopting a passive position, Majlis has acquired five roles and functions in Iran's foreign relations: justification, acceptance, ratification, postponement, and acceleration of the decisions of other institutions.

Taking into account the framework of French Early Structuralism and the idea of epistemological shift developed by scholars such as Merleau- Ponty and Bachelard, the present article surveys one of the main conceptual themes of the present theorization in the area of international relations i.e., the possibility or impossibility of a paradigmatic shift and its formative causes. The central point of this article is that the present debate between the two rational and reflexive paradigms lies on the confrontation of two modem and postmodern philosophical metaphysics and episteme each of which is established on certain distinctive fundamental principles and constructs. This situation leads to different forms of rationality and objectification process. The outcome of this confrontation in international relations is the formation of a radical shift in paradigmatic field manifested in the fourth debate of international relations between rationalists and relativists. Philosophical-linguistic turn in the theoretical field and globalization in the practical area have highly contributed to such a shift.

The present article seeks to derive an analytical framework for foreign policy from the critical theory of Frankfurt School. It aims at showing the possibility and capability of applying the concepts, assumptions and principles of the critical theory toward explanation and analysis of foreign policy. In other words, we try to answer the question whether it is possible to use the critical theory as a conceptual and theoretical framework towards analyzing foreign policy. The testable answer to the main question is that the critical theory can be used as a theoretical framework towards analyzing foreign policy. So we can speak of critical foreign policy analysis (CFPA).

As of 2001 when the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established, an important issue was the reaction of regional and beyond regional actors especially that of big powers. Contrary to its traditional policy of not joining any regional security organization, Iran determined to apply for full membership in the SCO, thus achieving the status of an observer member in 2005. The present article seeks to answer the question why Iran changed its traditional policy and sought to join the SCO? In other words, the main question is: what have been the principal factors which shaped Iran's policy towards the SCO? Our main hypothesis is that consequent upon some fundamental changes in the structure of international system since 2001, Iran sought to use what we term the "structural opportunity" and to join the SCO. Iran seeks not only to guarantee its national security, but also to project the image of a powerful country in the Greater Middle East region.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, geopolitics-like most other issues of the human society- was changed. In fact, the new geopolitics is a novel explanation for the structure and situation of the post-Cold War world and redrawing a geopolitical map of the world .The geopolitics of the New World Order, resistance geopolitics, environmental geopolitics, and geo-economy are the most important geopolitical discourses of future approaches in international affairs. Emphasizing the importance of resurgence of the colonial geopolitics and the Cold War geopolitical theories, the new geopolitical discourse of the new Cold War suggests that the post-Cold War geopolitical order of the transition period-simultaneous with entering the Cold War of third millennium- has got a close link with some of the dominant cultures in the past geopolitical discourses. Therefore, although the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a historic event has widely changed the various dimensions of human life, it has not given rise to a new pattern of international politics differing from pervious policies. The present paper explores that the new Cold-War geopolitics, in fact, has emerged as an outcome of the most important attitudes of the past discourses. This means that from a structural point of view, it embraces the theories based on geographical realities (colonial geopolitics), containment strategy (the Cold War geopolitics) and also geo-economic approach. From the Essence point of view, it goes along with colonial geopolitics, the Cold War geopolitics and the new World Order geopolitics.