GEOPOLITICS QUARTERLY
Year:2008 | Volume:4 | Issue:2 (12)|Papers Count:8

The present research is an attempt to examine the relationship between state legitimacy and efficiency in the viewpoints of the residents of its realm as well as in viewpoint of the people who reside in two different regions. Given the expected functions of a government a questionnaire with 25 questions was designed and given to the sample, constituting 280 families, in south and north of Tehran in order to find out the residents’ criteria for a popular government.  Research results showed that a government based on Islamic principles and criteria is accepted by the people, but in addition to the rational and legal criteria prevailing in every society, some religious criteria arising from functions of a religious government is effective in the popularity of the government. The findings also showed that here are significant differences in viewpoints of residents of south and north regions of Tehran stemming from their socioeconomic class affiliations.

Today preservation and safeguarding of the territory is considered as a value for all the countries across the globe. Without any doubt the materialization of this issue lies in the management of the security of borders to have safe borders. Security is most fundamental need of evyer society and is the most important factor in continuation of social life. Iran has long borders with its neighbors whose insecurity creates concern for the central government and border dwellers. The role of social capital in the process of development of societies has drawn the attention of the scholars in recent years. The main purpose of the present paper is to study the impacts of different dimensions of social capital on security of the border areas. The data has been collected through field study and then analyzed through descriptive-analytical method. The data was garnered through questionnaire and then processed by SPSS software. The findings of the present paper show that the inhabitants of the region under study have confidence in each other. The findings also show that the borders are calm, but there is trafficking of good s and alcoholic drinks.

The threats and risks that countries regularly encounter with, depending on their intensity and scale, are so capable of challenging the local, national and international spaces. Sometimes, human-made and natural threats in the geographical space create settings that hinder the state functions. Inequality in distributing opportunities has caused a regional imbalance in Iran. This regional imbalance has had great impact on the human resources relationships and as a consequence, has made many different kinds of threat resources. In addition, the natural environment of Iran is also under threat so that in various occasions, this creates challenges in local and national levels. In this research, the threats are divided based on two factors: human-made and natural factors. The threats based on the former includes: population, ethnic and religious variables, political challenges, economic imbalances and so on. On the other hand, the natural threats include flood, earthquake, draught, climate changes, avalanches, and so on.Using statistical data obtained from GIS, the types of threat sources were examined and analyzed. The results promoted, embody a wide variety of threats that should be considered in any political management. Using a descriptive-analytical approach and different library resources, and analysis of statistical data extracted from designed maps, the current research tries to make a typology of various threat sources in order to help politically manage the space in Iran. 

Border trade is one of the main indicators of establishment of relations between neighboring countries and business of the border dwellers. Through these markets the border dwellers of neighboring countries can jointly use the common opportunities and resources. This very issue can lead to continuation of friendship and mutual understanding, security, economic growth and development, creation of job opportunities and formulation of a kind of relative advantage in the border areas. Despite ample capacities in the border areas, one of the main features of these regions is distance from the center. This geographical feature that mainly stems from the nature of these areas along with the centripetal policies have left their undesirable impacts on the border areas. One of the consequences of these features is depravation and marginalization of these areas. The existing bottlenecks have pushed the neighboring countries to establish border markets to achieve economic and social justice and also to boost bilateral cooperation. The present paper is an attempt to study the impacts of the border markets on the development of border areas, with special reference to Sheikh Saleh Border Market. The garnered data was processed with the help of SPSS and GIS software and the processed data was analyzed through descriptive-analytical methods. The findings indicate that the economic condition of the region has undergone considerable changes after the establishment of the market.

In democratic political systems, participation of citizens as the most effective actors of space in political processes is one of the main concerns of politicians and statesmen. Participation of citizens in the state affairs has different forms, of which election is considered to be the most eminent, to the extent that in some countries it shows the legitimacy of the political system. Election and electoral behavior are political approaches which are related to the structural functions of cultural and economic subsystems within the greater framework of social system. In fact, in many countries, election is regarded as a kind of comprehensive referendum, for the quality and quantity of public participation in an election reflect the extent of legitimacy, efficiency of a political system, policy-making and popularity of the executives. Understanding the electoral behavior of citizens and their participation pattern is very important for parties, politicians and governments, because the active, high and great participation of people in elections means national support at the domestic level and a high credit at the regional and international levels. Election in Iran provides an opportunity for civil participation of Iranians in political affairs and it seems that the participation of citizens in elections after the Islamic Revolution reflects the ideological presence and tribal-racial approach resulting from a certain sense of place. The present paper tries through a scientific and analytical approach to study the reasons and factors of people's participation in the eighth parliamentary elections and attempts have been made to compare these factors in the political space of different geographical places in Iran to examine the position of the geography of election in this participation.

Slum dwelling, as a local, national and trans-national process, is the spatial reflection of the existing disequilibrium in the process of national policymaking and function of geopolitics of capital on the one hand and the local causes and factors on the other hand. In the light of the above factors, slam dwellers are the victims and the consequences of the abovementioned unavoidable circumstances. They select the suburban slams, as the crossroad of urban and rural spatial contexts, for their social life, especially in the developing countries. As a matter of fact, they are not slam dwellers, but they have been repelled to slams and are condemned to tolerate all sufferings in the slums. In the final economic, social, cultural, identity and even humane contradictions in the hope of relative realization of spatial justice, they have found themselves in confrontation with urban marginal challenges.Based on fundamental principles of explanation of spatial disequilibrium and inequality, the present paper is an attempt to discuss the prevailing challenges in the relationship between slam settlements and the metropolitan city of Mashhad. Attempts have been made to go beyond tranquilizing approaches and formulate a new conceptual framework for definition of slam-dwelling to prepare the grounds for the solution of this problem.

The concept of place and place-based policies, sense of place and place identity are important issues in political geography of the states. The sense of place is man’s sense of dependence on the place where he lives. In the present study, this sense is synonymous with or close to place experience, love of one’s place, place identity and roots. The present paper is an attempt to provide answer to the following question: why and how place as a geographical concept creates different sense including attachment and indifference among individuals and groups. In this research, sense of place (as an independent variable) is a factor that causes transformation of a space or ordinary place to a place with special sense and behavior among particular individuals. The sample of this research includes the Yasuji students in Tehran Universities. The research method employed in the present paper is descriptive-analytical. The data were collected through questionnaire and library resources. The results indicate that ethnic culture in the interaction with the public culture though influenced by the latter could preserve its traditions and represent its autochthonous identity via the use of verbal literature.