GEOPOLITICS QUARTERLY
Year:2013 | Volume:9 | Issue:1 (29)|Papers Count:9

Introduction: organizing states affaires is done by institutions that have power and authority in geographical space. Power and authority in geographical space is formed by force or transferring nation’s power to state.Currently, transferring nation’s power to state is the popular phenomena in political structure of most countries.There are three state patterns: unitary, federal and regional. There are some differences between state’s system and power distribution in space. Unitary state pattern is divided into two parts: centralized unitary pattern that has centralized political and administrative system and decentralized unitary pattern that is centralized from political and legislative prospect and it is decentralized from administrative prospect.Analysis of centralized unitary systems in some countries that have diverse geographical environment and human groups show that these systems face the following challenges: lack of geographical justice, lack of structural and functional integrity of space and homogeneity, transient and government-based participation, bureaucracy, regional and local challenges, imperceptible and sustainable development, centralized communication networks, enlarging capital of state and regional cities affected by concentration of capital and money, concentration of governmental organizations. This research shows that these challenges are the result of four variants: legislation, centralized political management, low and transient participant and political division of space as a context of functions of political and administrative institutions in these systems.This research will present a theoretical framework in relation to expounding political management of space in these management patterns by investigating current challenges using descriptive methodology and library and documentary findings as data gathering procedures…

Introduction: Positive and negative geopolitical phenomena have always had important role among factors that specify Iran’s fate. Currently, energy is one of the important variants in Iran’s fate, and one the ways that Iran can promote its security coefficient. Attention to the foreign policy is based on energy security.Iran’s energy geopolitics in two facets of geo-economic and geostrategic has the potential of supplying national security and interests. Iran in the facet of geo-economic (with respect to this point that it has the second place in having oil and gas resources in the world) has the potentiality of being converted to one of the major energy partners of oil and gas consumers. Also, Iran in the facet of geostrategic has the position that can have a pivotal role in supplying region and world energy security. These mentioned facts decrease Iran’s geopolitical power in supplying national security.The argumentation of this article which is analyzed through descriptive-analytic method is that if at the macro-level, the developmental national security approach is prioritized, then we can make use of a robust energy diplomacy for developing national power and national security...

Introduction: Each geographic region and each country is defined by two factors: 1- Focal point or political center, 2- certain realm and domain.According to international regulations, all countries have certain territorial area which is recognized by International institutions and other countries that is displayed on the world political map. In addition to the official concept of realm, on the basis of Islamic attitude, it is possible to consider another domain for each country which is called sphere of influence.Sphere of influence is a geographical domain theta country is able to control its existing environmental process in perceptible or imperceptible form. The sphere of influence of a country is the total of various political, economic, military, geographical and cultural factors. On the basis of this article, the cultural and soft factors and sources are considered as the most principal factors affecting countries' sphere of influence.With respect to the this point, the present article emphasizes the Islamic attitude in the domain of political thought, and therefore, this research tries to study and discuss the role of cultural factor and soft sources of power in expanding sphere of influence of countries using the principals of Islamic-political thoughts.In this relation, there is a question that is: “what is the sphere of influence and what factors does it have? In response to this question, a hypothesis is presented that is: “it seems that sphere of influence consists of a country’s influence that exerts and the major index in specifying this sphere is the index of cultural authority...

Introduction: Geography of terrorism investigates the role of geography in the creation of terrorism in geographical space levels. In Iran, in particular in boundary and periphery regions, geopolitical and geographical traits have an important role in the creation of terrorism. This matter is very objective in the southeast of Iran. In fact, some geographical contexts (physical and human) like: weak vital fundaments, having high distance from political center of state, existing vast geographical phenomena, asymmetrical regional development, ethnic- religious differences with central state, existence in boundary region and weak communication network and etc. as internal factors and some geopolitical factors like: trait of neighbor countries, regional and supra- regional powers and drug geopolitics as external factors have the most profound in the formation of terrorist groups in southeast of Iran. This article tries to investigate geography of terrorism in southeast, geopolitical and geographical traits affecting the formation terrorist groups and their activities in this region...

Introduction: The balance and structure of power in Arabic-Islamic domain of the Middle East and North Africa is in a way that any kind of change or evolution causes new geopolitical changes at different international levels along with international changes. With culminating protests and falling dictatorships in this domain, along with destabilized powers and prolongation of changes in the Middle East and North Africa which resulted in the attenuation of strategic position of Israel, current situations are clear manifestations of extensive changes in strategic attitudes of powers toward mentioned approaches which consists mostly of two major subjects, namely Islamic awareness along with youth claims and uprisings in the developers of geopolitics of regional government. Especially, predicting a kind of deconstructed social reconstruction and social construction based on modern nationalism with the important attendance of people in different arenas is not far from expectation, but considering the uprisings at internal and external levels, one can think of these claims as diverse and different and Islamic-governance prospects with emphasis on mild Islamic attitudes can be thought combination of Islamic fundamentals and a value along with a free political and social arena which is claimed by the young. The process and result of election in two countries, namely Tunisia and Egypt, has the account of the partial attention of people toward the function of Islamic interests in the evolution of new governments. However, predicting any kind of fundamental and short-term change in the direction of transformation in the above mentioned situation is difficult because western powers, in their strategic evaluation of their effective regional attendance with continued effort for preventing attempts in deconstructing their national cohesion by others, are seeking for the maintenance of conflicting social structures in societies, and they try to maintain religious conflicts in the modern Islamic-Arabic change preferences of the Middle East and south Africa. The above mentioned issues are some of the parts of the content of this article which are analyzed with the aim of investigating the reasons and results of Islamic-Arabic evolution in the Middle East and South Africa based on strategic approach and fundamentals of geopolitics...

Introduction: Rural development documents show that management of rural development has not been done by governments, bureaucracies and market as a process. Currently, people and public institutions have been considered in the frame of governance word as substitutes for management word and with new institutionalizing approach with the aim of enabling rural development. So, principles and approaches, planning architecture with social approach and designs of rural participation have been decreased, and these facts have been accompany eddying increase in governance’ function against governments’ actions and interferes. This paper is done with the purpose of performance analysis of dispute settlements councils in promoting rural development management of Shabestar villages. Research methodology is descriptive-analytic and the data gathering procedure is field finding. The samples of this research consist of 16 villages of central section of Shabestar which have consultation settlement of dispute. Here, 230 Householders were selected using random sampling. This research uses 9 indexes (good governance index) and 58 criteria to analyze the function of rural consultation settlement of dispute and justice home. Finally, we have used independent T-test to analysis data. Based on results earned from analysis, it can be said that dispute settlement councils relatively promoted management of rural developments of Shabestar villages...

Introduction: In the era of civilization of information, citadel dwelling of some territories and wilderness dwelling of some others is a new phenomenon that this paper is trying to clearly explain its whys and where forces. Thus, this study has been carried out with a comparative study and with an empirical approach. Findings show that inequality (gap) of territories is related to their benefits of democracy (Democracy gap).Territories inequalities in benefiting from democracy lead to inequality in information and communication technology (technology gap). Technology gap leads extensive technology owner territories to enter space of flows and territory. Also, it leads to limit territories that have less and limited place spaces. Its spatial appearance is the development of space of flows and underdevelopment of territories of place spaces (gap of development). It's necessary to say that development and underdevelopment of a Territory can respectively lead to democracy or destruction. Territories’ inequalities have roots in democracy gaps more than having roots in technology gaps because democracy is as a splitting factor of territory- places and territory- spaces. In other words, the gap place of territory in information civilization is democracy because democracy paves the way for accepting multi- acceptance of information civilization in territories...