The circumstances governing the international system and global power structure are indicative of the spread of insecurity and crisis at varying local to international scales. As much as the development of pervasive and far-reaching crises has created challenges for the international security systems and requires the need for rearrangement of and transition from security ambiguities, it has similarly added to the importance of adopting efficient strategies and updating the national security policymaking structure of countries. “ Erosion” as an ancient and efficient strategy adopted by different countries during wars, crisis control, and change in power balance is rooted in history, and has been used by weak or strong sides of various conflicts as a strategic initiative while incorporating efficient and economical mechanisms. Despite the wide applications of this strategy in national security policymaking, there is no formulated theoretical framework outlining its deep knowledge and effective use at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. The existing literature on erosion is of historical and descriptive nature and does not embody a theoretical framework. For this reason, the present study aims to provide a theoretical framework for the strategy of erosion in national security policymaking through review of theoretical literature and tapping scientific knowledge available in the fields of strategic management and strategic policymaking as well as scientific and historical information on the erosion strategy. The present study was carried out with a qualitative approach and by utilizing an analytical-descriptive method. Information was gathered on a library basis, and a deep qualitative analysis method was adopted for information analysis.

The water crisis in Iran for nearly two decades has become an important concern for people and politicians and has always been raised in the media. Locating in dry and semi-arid belt and low rainfall, there are few water resources in Iran. Resource management should offset water scarcity through a variety of methods, due to population growth and agricultural and industrial development. The government has the most important role in this regard, which needs to have a good policy for water management. However, at the present moment water crisis is not considered as a priority for policymakers, and the lack of a well-structured program, as well as poor performance of the authorities has worsened the country’ s water resources. Various institutions are involved in water resources management, which are generally divided into policy and executive institutions. Water resources policymakers have not yet come up with coherent and clear policies for understanding the water crisis and for a genuine crisis resolution. In the area of executive bodies, every water-related entity, regardless of the water crisis and the consequences of implementing sectoral policies on water resources, is trying to meet its organizational goals. The lack of expertise and coherent policies in the face of the water crisis and the implementation of sectoral policies without sufficient attention to water scarcity have put the country’ s development policies on the water resources and the challenges of the water crisis are constantly increasing. The main question of the article is what is the policy of water in Iran since 2001? Based on this question, our hypothesis is that the water crisis is not well positioned in macroeconomic policy, leading to a lack of clear and comprehensive planning for the crisis and that existing programs are partly due to lack of coordination between institutions and agencies. The water crisis has not finally come to end.

The world is considering the great change in sphere of globalization process in 21st century in which individuals living on earth are regarded as members of a mutual political entity. Economic globalization is the most significant and conspicuous model of globalization. One of the most important issues in economic globalization process is the function of states in economic policymaking. The present research takes into consideration the effect of economic globalization on economic policymaking of states. The main hypothesis of research is that economic globalization shows a trend in depoliticization of economic policymaking.

Development requires planning, policymaking and management in all stages of preparation of the vision, strategy and implementation. Attempts have been made to show that division of labor and specialization of science on the side of some philosophies involve threatening influence of technocracy on policymaking. Technocracy ultimately prevents development from moving towards the direction of public welfare. Hence, in order to have suitable indigenous development and progress, we need philosophical backgrounds as suitable contexts for possibility of criticism and reformation of policymaking.

This paper focuses on soft power as a means of simultaneous defense and offense (without in-depth discussion of the nature of soft threats) before discussing potential and actual soft power capacities of the Islamic Republic. It also elaborates on possible applications of this immense source of national power to both head off soft threats and impress target societies in an offensive manner. In fact, the main hypothesis of this paper is that overemphasis on the concept of "soft threat" will cause the Islamic Republic to ignore its "soft power" resources, especially in cultural and civilizational fields, and unconsciously take a defensive position when formulating and implementing relevant policies.

Policymaking is a sovereignty function of the government. Scientific findings of policymaking as a field of study lead us to the micro and macro activities of the government in various areas. Universities are among the areas which are important for their roles in human development and promotion of culture, sciences and technologies and must be considered in determining patterns of policymaking. Using improper patterns in policymaking in universities may divert them from achieving their goals and impose even more difficulties on the society. Using models and modeling is among the measures presented for better understanding of factors and variables of policymaking in universities. But their success and efficiency are questionable in the present situation. The article tries to examine present policies of universities for determining amount of their enjoying benefits of the existing models and presenting a proper model for them. The findings show that the Iranian Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, as the legal authority of policymaking for high education, has used almost all models. But the article suggests an integrative model (a contingency approach) based on combination of five models, i.e., systemic, process, rational, incremental and institutional models. Regarding the inadequacies and limitations of using the models separately, it seems that the integrative model could be efficient.

Societies have become increasingly complex; fragmented; dynamic and variable, and different forms of governance have been created to address new governing challenges. Governance networks which in general facilitate flexibility; speed and innovation in the government, compared with traditional governance forms, are necessary to meaningfully govern smart societies. The popularity and scope of governance and policy networks researches and practice continues to expand from its divergent foundations, assumptions and methodological positions, and at the same time, it is rife with disparate typologies and conflicting terminologies, so that there is no a generally agreed definition of them. The main purpose of this research is to collect; summary; assessment; and the development of the theoretical literature related to epistemology and the challenges of governance networks and policymaking with an inductive approach and using the qualitative method of metasynthesis. The research sampling method is purposeful sampling, articles and studies have been selected that can answer the research question. For regular search of samples from different informational resources and scientific databases have been used and after qualitative analysis of selected articles and studies, common themes and concepts were extracted in relation to the subject of the research are recorded and by re-reading several times, the basic and common themes in all studies are combined together; and the dimensions and factors affecting the subject of the research have been extracted and presented, as well as suggestions for further studies and researches in this field have been presented. The conclusion of the research includes this fact that the growth of the complexity of public issues; It has made necessary the use of different types of governance and policymaking networks, despite the existence of challenges in these networks, in line with the implementation of section 10 of the third article of the country's constitution.

Lack of establishment of coherent systems of knowledge management in energy policymaking network, considering the dispersion and changes in the policy actors of this field and the effect of their specialized knowledge and experience on the quality of policymaking, It will force the government and related organizations to undertake a chief part of the costs of the trial and error and previous experiences for the following policies again. Therefore, this research with an inductive approach and using the qualitative method of thematic analysis and using the MAXQDA software seeks to develop a pattern for knowledge management in the country's energy policymaking network. For this purpose, after examining the theoretical foundations and analyzing the relevant documents and laws, number of 19 people of experts was interviewed using the purposeful sampling method. Based on them, 99 basic themes; 32 organizing themes and 7 global themes have been identified. The validity of the results has been examined and the reliability of the research has been confirmed by calculating the percentage of agreement observed between different coding. Finally, the concepts; dimensions and factors affecting on knowledge management in the policymaking network of the energy field including the network of Activists, policy network, knowledge infrastructure, knowledge acquisition, knowledge retention, knowledge sharing, and knowledge application, and their relationship with each other has been extracted and the final pattern of this research has been proposed.