JOURNAL OF POLITICAL STUDIES
Year:2011 | Volume:4 | Issue:13|Papers Count:9

International political economy is considered one of the social science disciplines. This field of study, which has received serious attention in the West, benefited itself from various fields of social sciences for better understanding of the complex problems of interdependency of the world community. Politics, economy, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, comparative politics, and international organizations are all contributing to the understanding of international political economy; as such international political economy is a multidisciplinary field of study which involves multivariable and dimensions. It is tried in this article to use all levels of analysis including individual, national and international levels in theoretical and practical explanation of international political economy. In addition to this, it is also tried to assess, theoretically and pragmatically, the USA and Chinese relations so that the theoretical and practical approaches jointly make comprehension attainability of international political economy easier.

The primary objective in this paper is to carry on a general review of applying historicism approach to the study of international relations and find out how the employment of such research approach would further our knowledge of subject matter. Application of insight obtained from Historicism approach to the study of international relations would probably enable us to explain the connection between the existing data and theory. From this perspective, discovering of underlining reasons of historical happenings we ought to be able to exposit these happenings free of prejudice or researcher’s bias. The entrance of sociology of historicism as an epistemological research tool into the study of international relations could potentially provide the opportunity of joint research on the basis of various theories of international relations.

Internet and cyber space have been assuming increasing role played in the formation of political upheaval in the recent years. Author, in this paper, is attempting to study how opposition has used these media in fomenting social movements in some of the Arabic nations in the Middle East. The main question now raised is how the structural opportunity provided by cyber space will help social movements developed into a civic network. Could the structural opportunities provided by digital opportunities result in the formation of public sphere of digitally direct social movements? Main data in this research is gathered through reading documents, articles and books and as such it is a library oriented research. Sociological and historical methods were employed in the gathering and analysis of data.

Westernization discourse is based on the certain feature that distinguishes it from various types of colonialism in the past. Some of these distinguishing features are complex aspects of culture, social and language. That is why mass media and modern communication technology are considered the primary mechanism of westernization or western latent dominance. Westernization also employs techniques such as Islam phobia, clashes of civilization, Islamic radicalism as its goal attainment. One of the west behavioral patterns to foster westernization is to despise Islamic teachings. To this end, western media tries to show Islam as a religion of violence, attitude of instrumental approach toward women, the primary enemy of the west and democracy. They do their outmost to misinterpret Islamic concepts such as “Jihad”, “Fatwa”, and portraying Islam as the harboring and sanctuary of terror land terrorists in the world. The goals of the west with their new policies are to break down Moslems’ Islamic identity and tradition, propagate and institutionalize conventionalism among Muslims, vanishing Islamic values and portray the west as world’s heaven.

Congruency with the structure of international system is considered an important factor in the role acceptance of players in the Middle East which seems Erdogan’s government has efficiently used it in increasing Turkey’s regional power and its role in the politics of world community. Understanding the structure of international relations and its impact on the mobilization of Erdogan foreign policy in Middle East is primary question that it is tried to have an answer for it in this article. Evolutionary mobilization of Islamic thoughts in Turkey from Islamic radicalism into moderation demonstrates its high flexibility potential in satisfying and implementing world’s ideological and practical expectations. In foreign policy, Erdogan’s party in recent years has placed on its diplomatic agenda a multifaceted foreign policy and interaction with all nations. Pragmatism and understanding of true nature of relations in world community and also moving toward satisfying the structural requirements of international system are considered the important factors underlining the successfully mobilized foreign policy employed by Turkey in Middle East.

Political participation means behavioral involvement of individuals in various fields of political activities such as vote casting at poll stations, seeking political offices, campaigning for against particular candidates and various other types of politically related activities. Objective in this research is to examine empirically the role of social and psychological factors on citizens’ political participation in the city of Gonbad-e kavus situated in Golestan Province. Field survey research is the methodology employed and a researcher made questionnaire was the data gathering technique in this project. Statistical population is composed of all citizens of 18 years old and higher living in the city of Gonbad-e kavus. A sample of 400 people was drawn from the statistical population and the analysis of data was done through SPSS software capabilities. Findings are indicative of a statistically significant positive relationship (at 0.01 levels) between independent variables such as: age, occupation, economic, education, mass media consumption, level of communication with the metropolitan centers, and  the level of governmental trust with that of political participation as dependent variable. Findings also indicate that there is a statistically significant negative relationship between the feeling of powerlessness and political participation. Independent variables together explained 26.5 percent of variation in the dependent variable in which contribution by social and psychologically variables were 17.4 and 9.1 percent consecutively.

For years, one of the intellectual concerns in Iranian society has been to reassess Iranian society in its own unique historical context. The necessity of this re-examination was due to the dissatisfaction with the historical answers to the newly raised questions. Hence, to have proper answers to the questions posed concerning present Iranian society, a framework reflecting classic history, orient logy and discontinuity with the Foucault historical approach was employed. Mashallah Ajudani’s perspectives are examined within this framework. Qualitative context analysis and Hermeneutic were analytical tools of this research. In the last section of this paper, a construct is sketched to illustrate the logic of theorist’s perspectives. Findings were indicative of explanatory power of oriental list texts within the proposed sketched model. Based on this model, it becomes clear however, that the historical discontinuity of Iranian society could serve as a useful explanatory element in understanding social happenings in this country which is generally neglected in studies done so far.

Mirza Malkom Khan is counted as one the most influential enlightened thinkers of Naseri era. His political thought was an integrated expression of the thoughts of Mostesharodoleh and Akhoundzadeh, two exponents of modernization, which he believed that these two thinkers, due to their extremist approaches, could not make their views much acceptable to the political elites and citizens of their time. He tried to correct methodological weakness embedded in the thoughts of the two later thinkers and by doing so expecting to bring about religious reformation necessary for the implementation of western model of modernization which Mostesharodoleh and Akhundzade and his contemporary thinkers tried to achieve but failed. Hence, in this article Malkom Khan’s political-cultural doctrine at three levels of strategy, operational and technical are examined with the aim of understanding how he wanted, as one the enlightened personalities prior to the constitutional revolution, to bring about Islamic Protestantism and how his model of religious reformation could appear again and be applied by others in other historical periods.