JOURNAL OF POLITICAL STUDIES
Year:2013 | Volume:5 | Issue:20|Papers Count:8

Despite the denial of secular approach, religion has always played important role in the occurrence of socio-political events. Rational model and positive epistemology denies the influence of normative elements in the international interaction. Post-structural and in particular reflective approaches find rational model with its emphasis on normative elements had received significant attentions in the study of the role of religion in international structure system. Despite of some shortcomings such as relativism, constructivist approach with its emphasize on constructed idea, identity, interest, agent behavior and agent-structure and mutual coexistence is chosen in this paper for explaining the role of religion in International System Structure.

Muslims are considered as an exceptional minority in the contemporary Europe. The believers of the Islamic Sharia, especially the immigrants, are among the most problematic minorities of this continent. The Europeans comprehension of their identity and the non-convergent interaction of many of the Muslim Immigrants within European community had some consequences which made most of them, even after many generations, not only being unable to integrate within society but also made them antagonistic against society and vice versa. Muslim immigrants in Europe are mostly faced with identity crisis. It is aimed in this paper to use quantitative method in identifying the causes of Muslim Immigrant not being integrated within European communities. Two cities of Paris and Brussels are taken as sample cities representing European community. The views of Muslim immigrants and the European citizens of these two cities as expressed via questionnaires. The present situation of the immigrant Muslims is a serious challenge for the process of nation-state building and integration and sociocultural mergence in Europe which in the future can paves the way for serious crises for the western civilization. The ideological structure and the discursive system of Europe are non-accommodating with the most of this continent's Muslim population that makes these immigrants unacceptable to merge and become honorable and respected citizens within these societies.

Reza Shah’s version of modernization changed the communicative structure of society, however this process did not lead to a civil society. Leadership structure remains as before. It is argued in this paper that the transformation of communication structure during the reign of Reza Shah did not provide a coherent national identity. Religious conflict, ethnicity and language structure remained the same as before. Hence, Reza Shah’s developmental and its modernizing effort, at the end, did not drastically result into modern patterns of political and cultural structures and life style of Iranian people.

Globalization is the dominant process in this world. However, it seems that there is no clear cut consensus on the meaning of this concept. A review of literature on this subject reveals that Globalization refers to a process whereby economic, political, social and cultural structures of world community in interaction with one another becomes or have to become of similar so that transaction and interaction could be carried out easily. Globalization provides opportunity for the interdependence of not only nations but also between regions of the world. So, the main objective in this paper is to assess the impact of globalization on the political and cultural structure of Kuwait. Findings indicate that the economic structure in Kuwait is more affected by the Globalization of communication. However, political and cultural structures seem to show more resistance to changes under the influence of globalization than economic one.

Islamic fundamentalism has been one of the challenging topics in the international affairs during the past couple of decades. After the collapse of communism at the outset of 1990s, this discourse has strengthened its position. September 11 event, which surprised the world, shows the spread of the pragmatic power of this talk. The discourse of Islamic fundamentalism has been indeed turned mere thought to action. However, Islamic fundamentalism, as a radical interpretation of Islamic religion, has had a special position in international affairs. Fundamentalists, unlike the other Islamic groups like moderate Islamists or Secular Islamists, are trying to confront Western School of thoughts (human right, democracy, globalism, terrorism and secularism) and to challenge the power of the West. They are trying to prove that these indices are not pervasive and problem solving, and that western teachings and school of thoughts need to be looked upon from another point of view. The main question in this article is how fundamentalism, as a discourse has challenged Western Hegemony? To answer this question, Laclau and Mouffe’s approach was employed to assess the universal validity of Western most cherished concepts such as human rights, globalization, democracy and terrorism from Islamic fundamentalist patters of thought.

Culture is one of the significant aspects of international relations which has been neglected due to the dominance of realism paradigm in the international relations during the cold war period. Some theoreticians have considered culture as the third pole of the foreign policy, however, at the end of the cold war, culture had found its place at the center of international relations theories and had been investigated in theory and practice at the context of developments, particularly in the post-modern environment of globalization. Theories like constructivism and normative have dealt with culture in a special way and thereby culture has been considered as the fundamental principle in related theories and discussions. Furthermore, in practice and under the atmosphere of globalization, culture has been regarded as one of the features of globalization which could clarify and shape the bordering, convergences and divergences. It is of importance to note that the end of the cold war paved the way for cultural discourse to enter into a new stage and it moved into arena and formed global actions and interactions. It is also probable to assert that culture has changed into a hegemonic concept and has appeared as the basis for global developments that changed and made the culture of political and international bordering possible. The central sign of globalization discourse is culture and it plays an important role in antagonism, identity constructing, and hegemony.

Social media played important role in the shaping of events in Middle East region. Governments in this region used social media as a means of propagation and transferring their belief system and values to their people. Information technology has been used as a media of social mobilization and collective action. Relation between social media and social movements in Arab Spring has received much attention in academic quarters. Modern technology nowadays has overcome the boundaries as barrier between nations and region and is able to transfer the voice of politically opposition groups to their oppressed people and mobilize them against established order. It is the aim of this research to assess the role of social media on the social movements in the Arab states. It is also the aim of this research to see the changes in the socio-political and economic structure in the aftermath of Arab Spring.

The principal objective in this paper is to find out about the impact of massive communication technology on the national identity of the individuals. The proposed hypothesis to be examined is that the spread of social communication media leads to the lowering of individual’s national identity. To assess the validity of the proposed hypothesis, analytical-descriptive method was employed. Findings are indicative of negative influence of social media network on the strength of individual's national identity. Social communication media exposes individual to various cultural values and doctrines which in turn causes skepticism in one’s already learned values and attitudes. Change in attitude leads to reassessing of one's political orientation towards political system. In short, social media network that is able to cross boundaries eventually weakens individual national identity which in turn results in the questioning of society’s already held values.