فصلنامه دولت پژوهی
پیاپی 11 (پاییز 1396)

Between 2010 and 2013, during what was called the Arab Spring, the Arab world witnessed a wave of popular uprisings that led to the overthrow of four governments (in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen), serious difficulties for three states (in Bahrain, Jordan and to some extent, Saudi Arabia), and a civil war (in Syria). Other Arab states have seemed to be stable. These different outcomes raise the question of what were the causes of those uprisings, and why were some of them successful, but not others. In order to answer these questions, by employing the systemic model and the historical sociology method the involved factors are explored in six segments, namely, political, economic, social, cultural, military and external. These uprisings show that popular dissent is deep-rooted in the Arab countries, and can come to surface unexpectedly. However, what played the determining role in the collapse of some regimes and survival of the others was the specific composition of short-run factors in each country. Those events show those governments that by their political management attracted the allegiance of a considerable part of their population (even an important minority) and maintained the loyalty of the body of their army survived. When the shock of Bin Ali’s demise subsided, the Arab governments gradually learned from each other how to deal with the crisis caused by the Arab Spring, using various tactics to control their own population and to avoid the formation of an international consensus against them.

Geographical continuities, intraregional requirements, underdevelopment, and energy issue are among the issues which can justify the convergence of the Iran-Iraq economic relations; Iran and Iraq both are among Middle Eastern countries whose fundamentals of power and political legitimacy have been formed on the basis of religion. These two countries have many convergence grounds including Kurds issue, cooperation with OPEC, cultural and religious subjects, and the problem of foreign intervention. But despite the convergence factors, there are some factors such as capturing the regional consumer markets and production and the sale of oil that place the two countries against each other. This article by political economy approach and using a theoretical framework which is based on "the rentier state theory" and "integration theory" will assess the internal problematic of integration between Iran and Iraq by studying the structure of power in the region, and it will deal with the feasibility assessment of the convergence grounds of these two countries. This essay will show that domination of rentierism over the two countries’ state is the most significant obstacle for regional integration. Finally, the article will present some proposes which can help the promotion of economic cooperation and integration between Iran and Iraq in the region.

This article is aimed to explain transition to democracy by using some concepts of the theory of government elites, especially the notion of "transitional situations in Iran. From such a theoretical perspective one major question arises: what is the role of the government elites and the political field in the transition to democracy in Iran? In order to answer this question, we examined the hypothesis that the process of successful transition to democracy in Iran not only requires political elites who, in terms of structural solidarity and value correlation, are in opposition to the transition from the least harmony, but require a political field in which there exists a number of diverse civil, political, and economic institutions and parties and media. Therefore, from the perspective of the role of the government elites by studying the transition to democracy in the Islamic Republic and discussing the state of transition, its characteristics and factors, the present research tries to explain the relationship between the nature of the government elites and the political field and the transition to democracy in Iran. It tries to present an explanation of the different paths and outcomes of the transition. Thus the research shows that the transitional situation in Iran involves the consolidation of government elites and in order to achieve this, while reviewing the performance of the government elites in Iran, it highlights the main obstacles of the transition to democracy in Iran, and discusses about the ideological government, mass society, and the rentier economy structure.

Intellectuals are one of the important efficient social forces in political processes and policy making at sovereignty level. Besides they are one of the important and influential reference groups that give shape to public opinion. In Iran in 19 century, with civilizational collision with the West was shaped the intellectual mainstream under the impacts of Iran’s socio-political developments. In this research, the authors try to explain the reasons and factors of intellectual’s transition from democratic ideas and beliefs to the idea of authoritative state in two time periods of constitutionalism and Pahlavi by using explanative method and knowledge sociology and romanticism. In response to this question, it must be told that in this metamorphosis rooted in socio-political factors in constitutional age such as political anarchy, Protorianism, national sovereignty crisis, non-realization of democratic ideals and principles and public tiredness of socio-political turbulence. The finding of this article shows that the intellectual mainstream in the beginning years of constitutional revolution and its critical situation came to this conclusion that in the absence of authoritative state or government as a main motivation for development, there would be no hope for national sovereignty and development and additionally without authoritative stability, liberties lead to anarchism and national humiliation.

One of the main concerns of political Sociology of Iran is how to enter the path of political development. In other words, it means by which way we can achieve the political development: from the top and by the dominant political elites (reformation), from the bottom and by the presence and entrance of masses into the political realm (revolution) or from the outside (international organizations/human rights agencies)? The explanatory claim of this research is that political development is hard to achieve without considering the nature of the political culture of Iran’s mass. In this regard the main concern of the present research is to explain and analyze the effect of the mass political culture on the process of political development in Iran. Considering this important fact, the research is aimed to explain nature of the relation of political development and political culture and the effect of the mass political culture on political development in Iran. The question of the research is what effect the mass political culture has on the process of political development in Iran. In order to answer the question of the research the following hypothesis is evaluated: because of the lack of the required contexts and opportunity due to the State the mass political culture has a deterrent effect on the process of Iran’s political development. The research method is descriptive-analytical on the basis of the framework of historical sociology and collective psychology.

In this essay we have studied the emergence and genesis of the Nationalization of the Iran Oil Industry Movement from a sociological point of view. We have also analyzed the formation of The National Movement through new power relations among the internal forces of State, Society and International Capitalism. In doing so, Deleuze’s genealogy has been deployed to construct a framework to evaluate the issue critically. Firstly, we consider the subjective position of social forces, the relation between these forces, deformation of the old political order and re-formation of a new state amongst the contemporary discursive metamorphosis and the context in which the events of this movement occurred. Secondly, the peasants’ and laborers’ claims and regional desires to alter the power relationships and riddance from social subjugation have been analyzed genealogically. The multiple and fragmented origins of The National Movement, resulted from the relations between sociopolitical forces containing the multitude, the central state and world powers, have been scrutinized throughout this study. Furthermore we evaluate the convergences and divergences of The National State and The National Movement in the framework of the relation between institution and movement. The results of this study show that “The National Movement” at the beginning of the 50s emerged out of a rupture from the social forces liberation movement of the first half of the 40s, but the domination of the politics of representation over the affirmative metamorphosis of these forces undermined the potentials of the movement for altering the sociopolitical structures.