STRATEGIC STUDIES QUARTERLY
Year:2015 | Volume:18 | Issue:3 (69) |Papers Count:9

Election mechanism is a basic requirement of a democratic system. It is important not only for its role in founding a democratic society but also it has impact on the functions of the system in several aspects including political, economic and social affairs. National security as one of the important aspects of political affairs is not excluded from influence of the election mechanism. Therefore the paper illustrates the impacts of election mechanism on national security using system theories, historical studies and quantitative methods. Establishing security-building functions of election mechanisms, some case studies against and proper conditions for the realization of those functions are among other topics touched in this paper. This study shows that the implementation of the said functions is subject to a set of requirements namely the adoption of an appropriate election mechanism, filling the ethnic, race and religious gaps in multi-sector societies, promotion of cultural participation, lessening the influence of great powers and finally overcoming challenges of economic underdevelopment.

Voting is one of the most well-known forms of political participation according to the political sociology. This political act as a reference can bring about different referents based on a number of discourses. According to the religious democracy, voting is not merely a political act but also is a religious affair and therefore can be assumed as a religious undertaking. But on the basis of the Western democracies, voting is a citizenship duty. These democracies believe that voting is of the least important form of political participation. Yet, the religious democracy considers the voting as a religious assignment.

The legal system of elections in Iran is based on the principles of the Constitution, legal institutions and electoral practices. These three sources are parallel and the legal institutions are in line with the Constitution and the practices are in line with the domestic laws. Assessment of the stability and value of the legal system of election is dependent on the association with the said sources; however, this connection cannot be measured with legal criteria. According to the Constitution, the legitimacy of officials and the validity of the affairs are driven from the elections. Legal system of elections cannot be stabilized on the basis of domestic laws, because accumulation of the laws with regard to the elections and their continuous changes in the aftermath of the Revolution together with the defects have led the legal system of elections to a phase of practice and error. Furthermore, the electoral practices and understandings of the domestic laws cannot contribute to the needed stability of the legal system of elections.

The paper discuses the social factors influencing electoral behavior of the Iranians. It begins with a discussion on the sociological analysis of electoral behavior and the literature review consequently it applies the theoretical findings on the practical data in Iran and highlights the social factors influencing electoral behavior of the Iranians. The author concludes that the analysis of Iranian’ s electoral behavior is very complicated and in this way one should pay attention to different elements such as social class of the voters, ethnic identity of the voters and the candidates, gender of the candidates and the age of voters. Of course there are other effective factors like religion, political system and the model of political acts of the voters, discussing the role of which, is beyond the scope of this paper. It is worth mentioning that the author provides us with several examples of electoral behavior in the past and emphasizes that the social factors are not of a single nature and they can be understood when they are interlinked.

The analysis of elections mainly focuses on the political acts and behaviors of the parties as well as interest groups of a society and describes the central reference of political fractions (for instants reformists or conservatives) that try to defeat the competing political wings. Using documentary method, the paper attempts to study the sociological aspect of the electoral behavior. According to this approach, the inspiring sources of participation in the elections are social, environmental, economic and cultural conditions of the voters; as there exists a direct relationship between the social conditions of the voters and their political orientation. Therefore, the author studies the electoral behavior of the voters for the parliamentary elections in Iran and to this end he enjoys three models of political sociology, political economy and political psychology.

This essay is mainly pursues to analyze Iranian elections to explain the fact that, in addition to positive and security-building functions of elections in Iran, there are also election-related factors that prepare ground for different levels of political instability, social crisis and security challenges in the country. Those above mentioned factors are rooted in interactions between three electoral actors: 1) governmental administrative and monitoring institutions; 2) competition pattern of political parties and groups; and 3) electoral behavior of public and social groups. Applying David Sanders' approach, this essay explores security-political consequences and challenges of people's electoral behavior and pattern of electoral competition among political parties and groups on political instability indicators (political regime and socio-political solidarity). According to findings of our research, and based on framework of electoral actors interaction pattern, there have been a circle of security situation in Iranian elections consisting of a threefold pattern: 1) fairly calm elections; 2) challenging elections; and 3) electoral crisis. Considering the vulnerabilities of election system in Iran, it seems that electoral behavior pattern of actors tends to be more challenging and destabilizing.

The paper intends to answer the question that how the elections can promote the international status and strength of a government. In this way, the following four elements have been discussed with special attention: democratic peace, significance of international legitimacy, public diplomacy and the principle of clean tablet. Free elections, indeed is a part of external interactions of governments, as they send special signals and connotations to other governments and cause their proper reaction. The elections also project democratic norms as well as providing proper bed for policy change which in turn can renovate the international reputation of governments. The Islamic Republic of Iran has already experienced these impacts in particular with respect to the presidential elections. Having said that, the author argues while the international situation for our country had been tense, the elections led to the re-enhancement of the country’ s reputation.