GEOPOLITICS QUARTERLY
Year:2011 | Volume:7 | Issue:1 (21)|Papers Count:10

Representation and delimitation of constituencies in electoral geography are two of the most important arguments in the field of political geography that are in a close relationship with electoral delimitation methods and criteria by which electoral delimitations coincide with scientific constituencies. The complexities of natural and human geography of Golestan province that gathers different elements of natural geography (mountain, jungle, plat, plain, desert and sea) and human geography (different ethnic group – Persian, Turkmen, Sistani, Turk and Baluch – cities, boundaries of country divisions, communicational paths and political and administrative power centers) in a geographical limited environment, have made different problems for the researcher from an electoral geography perspective. In this paper, by the descriptive and analytic approach considering the rate of coincidence of conditions of constituencies of golestan province with standard criteria of electoral delimitation and cases of applying Gerry Mondering phenomenon in delimitation of constituencies of Golestan province, we are searching an answer for the following question: what is the relationship of population ratio of Turkmen ethnic group in Golestan province with their representation in Islamic Council parliament.Based on the results of this research, some cases were found which were in inconsistent with standard constituencies and Gerry Mondering phenomenon in the delimitation of constituencies of Golestan province that has a negative effect on the representation degree of Turkmen ethnic group. After Islamic revolution, Gerry Mondering phenomenon has not been in favor of Turkmen ethnic group but the process of the changing of constituencies of Golestan Province has been in line with coincidence with standard delimitation.

The world cities are new-fangled phenomenon in the world economic system as the nodes where the world economy network connected and are the cause to shape the spaces of flows and makes the new power centers in the world's geopolitics. Meanwhile, the scholars of Peter Taylor's research group identified 54 cities as world cities and classified them on the bases of some deliberative indicators mainly in four field, namely, economics, culture, infrastructures, and communication facilities and categorized them into three ranks: world cities a (10 city), b (10 city), and g (34 city).On the bases of these researches it seems there is a deep gap between the first and the fifty-fourth cities. Thus we can conclude that there is a basic difference between the "world cities" and the "global cities". Generally speaking, when a metropolis finds her place in the global economy framework and begins to compete with the other cities as a node in the global economy network and in the spaces of flows, it will promote to a "world city" and it occurs only for one among a dozen. This paper attempts to explain the meaning and clarify the concept of these two different terms and explain the differences between the two and at the same time try to eliminate their conceptual ambiguity. The main purpose of the paper is to prove separately the differences between the "world city" and the "global city" and their geopolitical infiltration zone. The indices which have been used here are mainly inspired by Freedman's world city and Sassen's global city hypothesis, with an especial consideration to the Taylor's group 12 indicators. According to Taylor's group researches there are 10 first rank cities which identified as a cities, which six cities of these (New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore) considered as "global city". The other six cities in this group would be considered as global if they could continue the development process they are moving toward. The "world cities" which is considered as b and g groupings considered as world cities with different rank of importance are subordinate to the four "global cities" mentioned above. Therefore we can see an explicit difference between the concepts of "world city" and "global city". Global cities are the headquarters of global economy and stand at the top of world cities.

Security is a kind of deduction affair which has stable concept but it’s Geographical-political contents can be changed according to the time and the place’s condition. In the past, national security has been noticed in case of trooper`s threat from over the borders that the reaction also have its own task. But nowadays that concept has a closer relation with development than its classical description. In the past, development was also an equivalent for making and extending economy that after the 1960s the concept has been basically changed. As since Global Lecture on Stockholm, the Brat land report and also Rio de Janeiro report, in its new paradigm (Sustainable Development) notices all the aspects of human’s life with emphasis on social justice and impartial resources distribution. Therefore, spatial inequalities and unequal development in political spaces of a country can profound the political gaps, and it presents appropriate foundation for forming effective variables on national security parameters and creation of critical areas.Nowadays, centralized political systems which forming the structure of center-peripheral, have to deal with this threat. Mainly, these structures are consisting of edge that has been developed lesser than the center. In Iran, also, such a structure has been disturbed the territorial equivalency and balance between the center and environs and a more important thing is that environs areas are mostly have influenced by the ethnic-religious parts. In these cases differences will increase and divergence factor become strengthen. Regarding to what we mentioned, this research will analysis the level of developing in provinces of the country in order to compare Central and Border States, with underlining Sistan & Baluchistan province. This research will show that there is a big difference between Sistan & Baluchistan’s level of developing and other provinces, using Taxonomic module and descriptiveanalyzing method.

Political participation as a key factor of political development has many facets which can help political systems achieve a favorable situation vis-à-vis its proximity to democracy. In this regard, the political participation as a dependent variable is often influenced by a number of factors. The structure of political system, existence of different ethnic groups and diverse identities in a country as well as socio-economic and cultural issues are among the factors that have significant effects on the increment or decrement of political participation by citizens there. The present paper tries to study the reasons of increasing political participation of Iranian citizens in the province of Kordestan during 1997-2005. Utmost, the results show that economic factors, media, civil and political rights, changes in the country’s political atmosphere and similarly political transition in Iraqi Kurdistan have been influential on the decreasing trend of peoples’ participation in Iran’s Kordestan region. In this research, the most effective internal factor has been the hope to political changes in the country during the proposed period of study. At the same time, the most effective external factor has been the political transitions in Iraqi Kurdish region and their important outcomes under the framework of Iraq.

Iran actually began détente in foreign policy since 1988. At that period, Iran’s foreign policy made some Great powers and regional actors can organize and to make defense pact. They have capacity and variable instrument for self defense or to improve their regional security. These countries can use from ideology, defense motivation and geopolitics situation. Iran has historical role in Middle East. Iranian sprit and its geopolitical situation provide power and capacity for regional defense role. Islamic Republic of Iran for its regional role needs to make power and regional defense coalition.In this article, I use from “defensive Neo-Realism approach”. This approach has been presented by “Stephen Walt”. He emphasized on “balance of threat”. Iran can use this approach to promote its motivation, national role and capability for defense coalition.

The present research aims to study the obstacles hindering the establishment of sustainable development in the Persian Gulf and present appropriate model and arrangements for stability and security in this region to be ensured. To this end, the theoretical framework of regional collective security provided by Bouzan is considered as the appropriate and comprehensive concept for security situation in the Persian Gulf to be studied. Elements of dominance, threat, rivalry, dispute, and conflict in enmity and friendship models of the regional players together with other factors like arms competitions and politicalideological disputes in the region are main obstacles for sustainable security to form. The US as an intervening player in the collective security of the Persian Gulf not only prevents the development of regional cooperation efforts but also worsens disputes and conflicts. Considering intra- and inter-regional obstacles, the participatory and cooperative security model with the relevant requirements is recommended for the improvement of security in the Persian Gulf.

Measuring the external security of a country to determine its security in an international system and compare it is the main concern of politicians. Accordingly, we witness different efforts for measuring and quantizing security level of different countries but none of these efforts can show the real situation of the security level of them. At the same time, these studies reflect the Western county’s security and use them for measuring I.R. Iran external security level is not possible and reasonable. So due to special situation of Iran, we can’t use international indices to measure its external security. For this reason and because of the position of Iran in Middle East, this research has been started with the lack of a model for measuring the external security of the I.R. Iran as the problem of research. The objective of this research is to extract the indices to measure the external security of the I.R. Iran, design a model by which its contribution the level of external security of the I.R. Iran could be measured and measure the status quo of the external security of the I.R. Iran.The subject and research methodology is in a situation that lacks hypotheses because of effort for modeling and the methodology of research is qualitative methodology and systematic analysis for extraction the indices of external security of the I.R. Iran which are related to the soft elements and casefield methodology for designing the model for measuring security. International Security Studies (ISS) has changed and diversified in many ways since 1945. This research provides the first intellectual indices of the development of the subject in the world. It sets out the driving forces that shaped debates in ISS, shows what makes ISS a single conversation across its diversity, and gives an authoritative account of debates on all the main topics within ISS. This is an unparalleled survey of the literature and institutions of ISS that will be an invaluable guide for all students and scholars of ISS, whether traditionalist, “New agenda” or critical. The results of this research show that although determining dimensions, indices and indexes of threats helps analyzers make decisions, we should not imagine that it is a static model. The results of this research, also, show the security level is measurable and according following equation: y1=e1+h1 l y11+h2 l y21+h3 l y31+h4 l y4, the external security index of the I.R. of the Iran in first six months of 2009 at scale 0-100 was 56.6.