STRATEGIC STUDIES OF PUBLIC POLICY (STRATEGIC STUDIES OF GLOBALIZATION JOURNAL)
Year:2016 | Volume:6 | Issue:20 |Papers Count:14

This paper aims to analyze and explore the prospect of relations between Iran and European Union during President hasan Rouhani by future study’ s methodology. With Rouhani coming to power and adopting constructive engagement with moderation both at home and abroad, analysts and intellectuals signaled it as a turning point in Iran› s foreign relations. One of the crucial areas for the foreign policy of Iran’ s government is the European Union. Since both the Islamic Republic of Iran and the European Union constitute major actors in the international order, their interaction would be critical in most cases. Using library and documentary research method and descriptive approach, this paper attempts to explore how we may postulate the future relations between the two parties in the future and which elements would be most important in the mutual relationship? The findings demonstrate that despite divergence of opinion on issues like human rights, Peace process in the Middle East, nuclear issue and terrorism, the two sides enjoy common interests in the energy sector and Middle East developments. The European union has made efforts in turn, to foster its relation with Iran and neighboring countries to enhance its whole regional influence. JCPOA has also provided favorable ground for improvement and promotion of mutual relations.

Security issues are the main concerns for players in International relations, for they put them on guard against potential relations that might cause threats. Security feeling or lack of it determines the modality of cooperation and alliance among regional and trans-regional countries. The European Union is vulnerable to threats and crises arising in the neighboring Middle East. This state of affairs has driven the Union itself and its members to involve in the region to settle the crises. The Union members have expressed more interest to enhance collaboration with Iran in security, political, economic and energy affairs. This can be a new opening in bilateral relations. The research question is what impact JCPOA would have on Iran and the European Union. The hypothesis is that JCPOA can improve security cooperation between them. We have used descriptive analytic approach in this research.

The US hegemony seems to be on decay since the second decade of the twenty-first century. since most of America› s economic and military rivals, are rising from Asia, this amazing transition marks a historic re-location of power centers from the West eastward, and the end of Western civilization› s domination over global culture and politics, distinguishing this era from previous power transition processes in modern times. In spite of a general consensus among scholars about the happening of this transition, many disagreements still remain over the meaning of and the extent to which this process may affect the world› s peace and security. The main question is whether the demise of US hegemony will lead to less conflicts across the world, or will it result in re-emergence and re-activation of several international and regional disputes which had been checked over the past decades, due to the dominationof American world order? This paper concludes that before arriving into a multipolar or multiplex system, the world will go through an era of chaos and disorder. It is, therefore, necessary for all countries, including Iran, to prepare themselves for encountering with a variety of new threats rising from this situation. In this regard, regionalism would be one of the best strategies.

The promotion of oil and gas industry of a country or region requires foreign and longterm investments. Ensuring demand security constitutes one of the major driving forces for promoting investments in oil and gas sectors. Our main question is to understand the upcoming Energy demand security in the Caspian markets. Just like supply security, energy demand security cannot be affected mainly by regional economic logic, but a combinationof various factors is involved; for this reason, we have developed Combined Criteria for our study. We have selected the year 2015 as the recent past and 2030 as the long-term time scale to investigate the circumstances of the Caspian markets. The Combined Criteria findings reveal that Iranian and Russian swap markets would provide better conditions for demand security in the Caspian region than do China, India and European Union markets. China, European Union and India hold the second place. The European Union market is expected to surpass China in ensuring natural gas security demand in 2030.

The Islamic Revolution helped develop a new discourse and semantic system. One of the methods to study or analyze the political phenomena is critical discourse analysis namely, that of Laclau and Mouffe› s Discourse, the most pertinent. This article examines its main question whether the values of the Islamic Revolution concepts and identity are constructed, spread and articulated according to Laclau and Mouffe› s discourse theory. Our hypothesis is that the Islamic Revolution discourse with Shiite Islam as its core signifier, has faced the Salafist Islam and that Muslim Brotherhood in a discursivecompetition and then as an appropriate islamist model has managed to convert the liberal democratic discourse to its discursive Other. The Islamic Revolution discourse with its Shiite rich doctrine and some other prerequisites has also the capacity to make its signifying system, hegemonic in the globalizing age. Therefore, the Islamic Revolution discourse is constructing otherness in the globalization context that is a field of discursive competition. The results reveal that this discourse by promoting Shiite Islam fundamentals and Islamic Revolution discourse core principles and benefitting from Islamic Ijtihā d and expediency, if complying with some requirements, can be hegemonic in the globalization age.

This paper presents a discourse analysis of ethnic policies of the Iranian Governments during the presidential period (1989-1997). Our theoretical framework is Laclau and Mouffe Theroy of Discourse. The data were gathered from documents including development plans, laws of High Council of Cultural Revolution, and Cabinet of Ministers. Using critical discourse analysis, we identified master and floating signifiers of ethnic policies in each of the two periods. Our findings reveal that during the 8 years of President Hashemi Rafsanjani “ Modernization of Ethnic Regions” was the master signifier, and political sovereignty and national unity were the floating signifiers of ethnic discourse in this period

Upholding general culture for international competition requires a qualified higher education system and an internally systematic order. Rather, by relying on higher education, scientific production and distribution it is possible to update social value system in a given time and space at social macro level. From 1960s onwards, besides their task of transferring knowledge, universities became involved in knowledge production and research in various scientific and social fields, and even grew as socially responsible entities in the cultural sphere. Considering the fruitful socio-cultural experiences of Higher education in foreign countries and their critical impact for our academic organization, the current article is determined to explore the modality of cultural policy, administration and scope adopted by the sample universities under study. Based on ranking criteria, we selected Stanford, Chicago and Yale universities from North America and Canada, and Oxford and Manchester universities from Europe. The academic programs in different fields of culture, arts, community and public welfare were examined for each university. The paper ends with some practical suggestions.

It is necessary to design a model to implement Iran’ s comprehensive scientific map. We applied the grounded theory and used 31 in-depth qualitative interview with experts and known scholars of science, technology, and innovation. First the primary codes were identified by the qualitative analysis software (MAXQDA) and were analyzed and revised until theoretical saturation stage. Then, the reliability of the research has been studied according to four parameters of acceptability, transferability, dependability and reviewed conformability. We have tried to explain the strategies to this end. Finally, based on paradigm approach, 40 sub-categories, and 898 concepts extracted from 980 codes were identified and the implementation model of Iran’ s comprehensive scientific map was described and illustrated in the following six sub-categories: First, content support factors for implementation map. Second, organization and division of national tasks for map implementation. Third, national context and international environment of map implementation. Fourth, infrastructure conditions for map implantation. Fifth, strategic requirements for map implementation, and sixth, consequences of map implementation.