mehdi najafzadeh

The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan during the 1990s and their seizure of power was an important event in the fate of this country. Their fall and the establishment of the republican system in 2001 seemed to herald Afghanistan's entry into the corridor of democracy. However, the unexpected resurgence of the Taliban in the summer of 2021 was surprising to the world. This article attempts to examine the shaky process of democratization in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, from theoretical perspective of Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. This analysis seeks to answer this question: : what causes to the failure of democratization in Afghanistan and the rapid return of the Taliban?The integration of these factors facilitated the restoration of authoritarianism by the Taliban. The data in this article has been collected through library and documentary studies and analyzed in the framework of Acemoglu and Robinson's theories. The findings show that democratization of Afghanistan grows with the emergence of the Leviathan and empowers the society by eliminating anti-development norms.Despite international efforts for democratization that began at the Bonn Conference, Afghanistan's recent history witnessed the sudden fall of the Islamic Republic and the rapid return of the Taliban. The goal of the conference was to establish a new government and end the Taliban rule, but Afghanistan's deviation from the democratic path and the rapid resurgence of the Taliban reveals deeper complexities beyond common themes such as a collapsing state or systemic corruption. The vital role of participatory governance and social empowerment for sustainable democracy in Afghanistan was neglected. This failure highlights the complex relationship between govenment and society that is crucial to the maintainance of democracy. Therefore, we will further analyze the failure of democratization in Afghanistan and ultimately, the rapid revival of the Taliban. Emphasizing the nature of the state and society in Afghanistan and its consequences on democratization will be our focus.

Research question: 

what causes to the failure of democratization process in Afghanistan and the rapid return of the Taliban?

Research hypothesis: 

The hypothesis is that the nature of govenment in Afghanistan aligns with an absent Leviathan due to the weak structure and anti-democratic power of society. In such a setting, the cage of norms dictates policies and prevents the simultaneous strengthening of both the state and society, thus preventing the emergence of a Shackled Leviathan as a counterbalance to democracy.

Methodology and theoretical framework: 

This research examines the prerequisites for the transition to democracy in Afghanistan with a historical sociology approach. It rejects a simplistic and linear view and instead emphasizes the interplay of political and social factors. Drawing on more recent perspectives like Acemoglu and Robinson's, it highlights the necessity of a balanced relationship between state power and social consciousness. This balance, called the "Red Queen Effect," emphasizes the need for both the goverment and society to evolve and compete to preserve individual rights and independence and ultimately stenghten democratic transition. Acemoglu and Robinson analyze the normative barriers of democracy as the "cage of norms." Under the constraints of norms and the weakening of the state's capacity as another basis for the transition to democracy, the simultaneous empowerment of society and the state and the emergence of the Shackled Leviathan as an optimal transition point to democracy will not happen.

Afghanistan's weak state structure and social dominance hinder democratic transition. Norms constrain policy, halts govenmental and social progress and thwart a Shackled Leviathan. The lack of unified power hinders the use of resources and provision of public services and fuels poverty. Tribal values exacerbate the exploitation and violence that has become normal since the war. State-Social competition fails and hinders progress. Even intermediary institutions such as Jamiat-e-Islami, Hizb-e-Islami and Dawat-e-Islami did not prioritize increasing their modern capacity to collaborate with the govenment. The Afghan national government ignored the influence of the “Red Queen” concept and instead promoted specific tribal groups, a policy that was at odds with social awareness. During the democratization years, it was not the state but rather the actions of foreign forces that prevented major events such as the re-emergence of the Taliban. The stability of the state was not inherently linked to its authority. In a realm where there is no single authority (akin to an absent Leviathan), social support may falter or cease at any moment, affecting the stability of the state. This moment in Afghanistan coincided with the fall of the republic and the rapid rise of the Taliban.

During Afghanistan's Republican era, the absent Leviathan struggled to enforce laws, curb violence, resolve conflicts and provide public services. In fact, Afghanistan had wrapped itself in a facade of democracy, yet it had not even set foot in its corridor. The weak structure of this supposedly democratic system led to internal conflicts even during elections, deepened the state's weaknesses and limited the nation's development potentials amid foreign interventions. The divisions of Afghan society challenge the American narrative that simply hands the country over to the Taliban. The re-emergence of anti-modern authoritarianism was a gradual process, not a sudden event. Afghanistan lacks strong state authority which dims the prospects for democracy or stability. The lack of state authority and the resistance of rival factions perpetuate the cycle of violence. Escaping this, requires more than temporary changes—it requires leadership and dismantling the norms that fuel this cycle.

War in the social system of Homeric society is closely related to the role, responsibility and obligations of the warrior towards himself and others, to the extent that disgrace and honor, eternal name and shame depend on arete and the inner skill of the individual and the society's view of his external duties and responsibilities. The origin of the ten-year war also happened with the abduction of Helen by Paris, which was carried out with the biggest naval raid of the Greeks under the command of Agamemnon and the presence of Achaean warriors. The purpose of this research is to examine the place of the virtue of heroism in the battlefield. In the book Iliad, Homer describes the struggles and heroics of the warriors between the Trojans and the Achaeans in order to establish a model for the high culture of society in addition to the importance of the action. The main question of this study concerns the place that the concept of war has in the heroic virtue of Homeric society. The authors claim that the virtue of heroism in war, in which men gain glory and honor, is contingent on agathos and arete. The findings of this descriptive and analytical research show that the society gives honor to the heroes in the material life (respect) and the world after death (eternal name), and sometimes this gift is given to them by the gods.

The theories of the transition to democracy in the past decades consider political and economic development as a movement that started with enlightenment and then will inevitably lead to prosperity and progress. This is almost moving in a dogmatic way to realize liberty for all the countries of the world. Late theories and especially the development research Approach of Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson with an emphasis on politics, economics and history; They have shown that there is no coercion in the transition to democracy, but a completely unstable balance that must be constantly protected. The research question is: How was the relationship between the power of the state and the society in the constitutionalism and what is its relationship with the transition to democracy? in constitutionalism, the power of the Shah Decreased and provided for the development of society as one of the foundations of the transition to democracy. Under the subjugation of the cage of norms and the weakening of the state's capacity as another basis for the transition to democracy, the synchronic strengthening of society and the state and the rise of the Shackled Leviathan as the Equilibrium of transition to democracy did not happen, and Iran was thrown out of the narrow corridor of liberty. The method of this research is historical-explanatory sociology, and its data has been collected through library-documentary studies and analyzed in the framework of Acemoglu and Robinson 's theory.

Today's world is witnessing profound changes and transformations, all of which are understandable in the functional realms of identity, borders, the concept of geography (space), space and time. Identities are fragmented, borders are crossed and space and time are compressed. In this way, television as an international language is one of the effective factors in the occurrence of these changes and almost no part of the world can be found that is far removed from the waves and television messages as new ambassadors in communications policy. In the face of such a situation and to understand the components and coordinates of world television, this article has tried to examine the emergence and context of global television in the era of globalization through interviews with twenty communication and media researchers and try to analyze the components of world television in the foreign networks of the Islamic Republic Broadcasting. The results indicate that from the perspective of Iranian experts, the components of world television can be classified into four levels: technical components, content components, structural components, and finally tactical components (approach). And the contexts of the emergence and context of global television are influenced by five factors and themes: cultural, technological, political, economic and contextual.

In recent years, intelligent structures play the key role in different military fields and take the place of human operators in novel armed services step by step. Threat evaluation of flying air targets in command and control systems is performed by expert operators through their knowledge and experience. Analysis of input data in the data-fusion systems is a very difficult task requiring complicated decision. Capability and accuracy of intelligent systems for threat prediction of flying air targets base on different received parameters can be a great assist in final macking decision. In this study, a neural network and ANFIS regression models are used to determine the priority of the threat of flying air targets in the command and control systems intelligently and instantly. The error of trained neural network and ANFIS for test dataset are 4.14% and 1.65%, respectively indicating superior ability of these structures in threat estimation of flying air targets. Furthermore, relationships among target variables and threat level is studied. Finally, a dynamic battle scene with different flying air targets is simulated and developed moled is validated.

Communication systems are often exposed to a variety of random failures and targeted attacks. In random failures, nodes (links) fail with the same probability and are removed from the network. But in systematic attacks, the nodes that have the most importance (for example, degree, closeness, binit) are attacked first. Robustness against faults and breakdowns, as well as proper handling of attacks and faults, is one of the basic requirements in most of today's networks and communication systems. Thus, it is necessary for communication systems to show high reliability, availability, and robustness against failures, bugs, and attacks because they may be used as critical infrastructure for many communication networks. The research shows that existing complex networks, which follow a scale-independent structure, are more vulnerable to targeted attacks than random attacks. In this article, we analyze the robustness of Hanoi graphs and the Sierpinski and Apollonian families along with the introduction of a set of the most important robustness criteria. The main contribution of the present study is that with the help of these criteria, we can study the reliability and vulnerability of these functional connections against tested targeted attacks and the various methods of their construction from the perspective of safety and strength for communication between entities. The number and type of bugs do not impose any restrictions on the conducted investigations, and the effort was to test various patterns for targeted attacks. However, the criteria used are not limited to the above networks and are able to be used for different types of problems as well as a wide range of networks. In the following, a new architecture of defense networks is discussed by examining their resilience against targeted attacks, how these networks change against targeted attacks and the criteria for evaluating the strength of these networks. The obtained results show that the extensive defense networks inspired by the described connections were able to manage the created crisis and maintain their connectivity well.

The government, as the most significant political entity, is at the center of political theorizing. Sometimes, by love and ambition, it has been considered the main cause of political developments, and sometimes with anger and hatred, it has been considered one of the main means of injustice and oppression. Considering two ends of this spectrum, it is necessary to linger for the "government" to speak itself through its announcements. In this article, by using the semiotics of archaeological findings, an attempt is made to reread the nature of the government in Islam. The weakness of historiography, the lack of historical evidence, and the lack of theoretical efforts in this field are serious obstacles to research. In this article, by using the re-reading of the first Islamic announcements as a critical method to comprehend the nature of the government, an attempt has been made to answer the question of "What relationship can be established between religious evidence and the government?"Governments use tools to justify their legitimacy and strengthen their ideological foundations, although their reading after a long run cannot provide complete and comprehensive information about what really happened, by focusing on some existing signs, it can come close to revealing the nature of the government. Accordingly, among the multitude of announcements, the semiotics of the coin is emphasized and through it, an effort is made to shed light on the ambiguous and dark aspects of the nature of the government in the history of Islam (in the early, Umayyad, Abbasid, and Safavid eras).

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between modernization and urban development policies in Mashhad. The research method in this study is qualitative (theme analysis) and data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The statistical population of the study includes university professors, elites and specialists familiar with the field of modernization in Mashhad. Using purposive non-random sampling method and data adequacy and the principle of saturation, a total of 20 people were interviewed. Data were analyzed in three stages of open and axial and selective coding. The results show that before the revolution, the Western modernization style dominated the city and the Shah tried to implement the Western model in the city's development plans. After the Islamic Revolution, in the direction of urban development, direct and indirect intervention was made in the central part of Mashhad. But in the meantime, during the modernization of Mashhad in the post-Islamic Revolution, conflicts such as national and local conflict; The conflict between tradition and modernity and development without considering the principles of modernization has also emerged. The end result is the change of the city of Mashhad from a religious nature to a new modern city.

Explaining the relationship between the state and society is one of the most important theoretical challenges in political science. In a theoretical conflict and as a result of numerous criticisms of one-dimensional explanations of society or the state, the key question is to what extent univariate and one-sided theories have the power to explain and answer why and how the relationship between state and society is and what are their shortcomings. This article first seeks to critique the analytical tradition in the literature on government-society relations and then explain the components of historical institutionalism as one of the approaches in political science. According to this view, the government and society have mutually influenced each other in their historical process. This view sees the power of the state and the manifestation of this power in connection with the power of the society and considers the existing institutional arrangements in society and their transformation as the product of the connection of power structures in a historical process. The main components of this theory are “important milestones, path dependence, timing and sequence, events, design, and institutional transformation”. The analytical framework presented in this paper is based on systematic attention to how institutional arrangements are established and consolidated in the context of time, and therefore rather than having the characteristics of specific theories, it is introduced as a general theoretical framework. It may have more power to analyze the role of institutions in the social sciences in general and political science in particular.

Using "normalization" tools and institutions was considered because of an awareness of new methods of politics in the Qajar period. Centered on the Shah in politics; It was the king's power, the king's view, and the king's interpretation of things that ruled over all forces, relying on a kind of "religious power". To form a modern state in the first Pahlavi era, the rule of subjects began with the creation of special techniques based on "disciplinary power". In this transformation, the notion of "body" as one of the major components of the functioning of power relations is important because they apply all these actions to the subject's body. the question of this article is: How is the suffering inflicted on the bodies of the subjects, has it become a political tool, and through it, has political technology governed politics? In response to the research question, this hypothesis is raised: During the rule of Qajar and the first Pahlavi, In the process of the mechanisms of religious power and its evolution, the subject, and her body are transformed into disciplinary power and become obedient and sublime objects. This research has been done by using the method of genealogical research of tourists' memoirs and reports, government orders and stakeholders and historical narrations in governance in this period, and tries to call the approaches of the Qajar and Pahlavi governments by emphasizing "politicization of suffering" to deal with this subject. Ultimately, it explains how the "subject" becomes obedient and sublime objects.

Postmodernism is a revolt against one-dimensional and monophonic beliefs that do not fit into any particular mind or boundary, and it emerges at any moment and in any place, embodied in the frame of a work of art. There are no definite rules and regulations in postmodernism and its characteristics have not been compiled in a coherent way so far, but there is almost no doubt about its connection with language. The linguistic conception of postmodernism makes it possible to make a connection between historical texts and postmodernism. One of the Iranian stories which seems to be closely related to postmodern fiction is "Samak-e Ayyar". This research intends to study and analyze the components of postmodernism in the story of "Samak-e Ayyar" using narrative analysis of the three foundations of time, structure, and narrative. The general result of the research shows that the use of postmodernism in this work is quite obvious, and the components such as uncertainty at the time of the story, the shakiness of the structural frameworks due to the elements from other texts and the inner monologues of the characters, as well as the blurring boundary between fiction and reality in this journey can give us a better picture of the story.

This study investigates the effect of size scale material parameters on stress distribution and radial displacement of nanosphere based on strain gradient theory. This model is more capable of studying mechanical behavior than classical elasticity theory as the size scale effect of the nanosphere is also considered. Minimum total potential energy is used to derive governing differential equation of nanosphere under internal hydrostatic pressure. Using the efficient numerical generalized differential quadrature (GDQ) method, the governing equation and corresponding boundary conditions are solved. The classical elasticity equation is obtained by setting the value of size scale material parameters to zero. With the comparison of these theories, the importance of the size scale material parameters is achieved. It is found that the radial displacement of nanosphere predicted by strain gradient theory is less than those predicted by classical elasticity theory but comparing the distribution of stress components along radius is more complex. The effect of the size of the nanosphere on the radial stress components is also studied. With an increasing outer radius of the nanosphere, the mechanical behavior predicted by strain gradient theory tends toward those in classical elasticity theory.

"Conceptual history" is a relatively new theory and method that is influenced by the tradition of continental philosophy and new historicism. This theory and method, with its critique of traditional historicalism, emphasis on the "concept" and through the study of creation, the evolution and conception of concepts, one can represent ideological conflicts in a political structure. In this essay, after defining conceptual history, it attempts to address the role and role of this theory in continental philosophy by emphasizing the views of Reinhart Koselleck, the most renowned researcher in the field. In his seminal project, The conceptual history, Koselleck explores the concept, its differentiation with the word, and how concepts influence political events. He believes that without concepts, society as well as the political arena of action will not exist, and he believes that every concept in the system of thought has anti-concepts that can overcome it by having a specific meaning . On this basis, Koselleck puts anti-concepts against concepts and speaks of semantic battel that can justify and explain the efforts of political forces and groups to overcome a particular discourse. Conceptual history as a method is also attempted to discover the meaning behind the accumulated layers of time, among the points discussed in this paper. Since this paper aims to introduce the theory and method of conceptual history, the method used is described and can be useful for researchers in humanities.

Modernization is a term used to describe the process of social change in which less developed societies acquire the common features of advanced societies. Modernization brings many positive and negative consequences for cities. Mashhad is one of the metropolises of Iran that despite its traditional and religious context, has been modernized during the last century. Modernization of Mashhad after the Islamic Revolution of Iran has created threats and opportunities for the development of this city. The results of the present study show that economic, commercial, industrial, tourism and political development prosperity, which includes rationalization of authority, promotion of popular participation, increase of soft power, establishment of a regular and separate administrative structure, are among the most important opportunities and disproportionate change of the historical and cultural context of the city, environmental pollution, social and cultural problems have been the most important complications and threats of modernity for the city of Mashhad after the Islamic Revolution of Iran..

In studying the historical occasion of Iranian identity with Western other, to examine the first encounter of Iranian legislators with Western modernity took advantage of Lacan's mirror theory and the text of the negotiations was read in the National Assembly. The main question of the article was " How the faced of the first Iranian legislators on the occasion of Absolute monarchy other and Western Other is reflected in the text of the negotiations of the first constitutional parliament." The article was based on the hypothesis that the first Iranian legislators succeeded in symbolization between Western Other. The constitution of this period was finally able to create an important combination between sharia and Customary law, and to place Western law at the heart of sharia law. Iranian legislators have been able to redefine their identity on the finite self of law against the infinite self of the monarchy. The first National Assembly was mainly aimed at inside and reconstructing the tradition, and there is no sign of Westernization in the discussion of its initial discussions. This research is organized by the method of historical psychoanalysis.

During the 12th presidential election, three electoral debates on political, economic and cultural issues were held by the national media. In each of these debates, each of the six candidates in the two mainstream parties fundamentalist and reformist expressed their opinion isochronous. In the present paper Using the concept of metaphor, we seek to answer this question What are the main signs of these debates, and what message they are transmitted to the discourse of the country? The comparative study of the TV election debates (four main candidate Rouhani , Jahangiri , Qalibaf ,Raissi) has expressed based on six types metaphorical modeling and explanation، reconceptualization ,categorization , emotional perspective, creating intimacy and comic creation that there are intense ideological and discursive conflicts within the political structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran and often expressed in conceptual metaphors during the presidential elections of 2017.

Power relations were changed in Iran during the 1980s and 1990s due to the occurrence of the Islamic Revolution. Controversial sign systems created around power relations in revolutionized Iran and affected the social life of children can be identified. The paper deconstructed sign systems and the semantic contention of them in the child and adolescent TV programs of IRIB in two decades after Iranian revolution using the political framework and cultural theory of the child in the Pearce semiotic method, so that the hegemonic identity discourse of each decade would be extracted. The findings showed that during the 1980s, Islamic revolutionary symbols dominated the anti-consumerism, simplicity, and social solidarity within family and educational relationships. The sign systems social implicit area, by instilling a revolutionary identity in conflict with “Other” (the West), prepared children to accept authoritarian relations based on domination. And in the 1990s, overcoming the modern sign system vs traditional sign system, eliminate the patriarchal authority and dominated a relationship with the logic of dialogue on the system of family relations. The audiences’ identity was floated on the pivot of objectivity and subjectivity due to contradictory conception and made it impossible to achieve the concept of childhood.

This article, by applying the new methodology of historicism and the theory of sociology of literature, criticizes and analyzes threefold novels of Simin Daneshvar (Sovashoun, Wandering Island and Wanderer Squirrel) in three categories: (perseverance of characters from Sovashoun to Wanderer Squirrel), Survey of socio-political context of Iran and reflection of discourse conflict through these novels. On the basis of modern historicity in analysis of threefold text, this article focuses on both "history of text" and "text of history". New history belief of relations related to power is regarded as the most important position for any text, and views these texts as a space for displaying relations related to power and interactions between different discourses. Findings of the present article indicate that "the idea of self-coming and explicitly relying on mythological and religious manifestations," and "the words of protest against the object of power and the alien object" in the pre-revolutionary Sovashoun, and " re-reading of the past, emphasizing on Individuality subject "and" post-revolutionary metaphors "and" dispute between Islam and Marxism "in wandering island of Wanderer Squirrel can be clearly seen. The safest passageway to understand knowledge of people of a society and fundamental changes is to scrutinize their literary texts. In the final analysis, it is clear that the discurse elements in three novels of Daneshvar have taken the upper hand from the "society" to the "person".

The joining of the Hekmatyar to the process of Afghanistan national peace has been one of the most recent controversial upheaval and affective on the political-security situation this country. The discovery of the cause of this state-reception and the Hekmatyar's historic anti-state is a major issue in this paper. The purpose of this question is to represent the role of politics on the emergence of violence in Afghanistan. Therefore, the question of the present research is that what was the main reason for Hekmatyar's military approach to the states of Afghanistan (1966-2016) and then change it to political approach? The research hypothesis, which is operationalized in the format of the structural theory of Douglas North’s social orders, is follows: the nature and structure of the power systems of the kingdom (1933), authoritarian (1973), communist (1978), non-institutional (1992), and fundamentalist in Afghanistan (1996), which is opposed to Hekmatyar’s Islamism and democratism policy, imposed an armed approach on the party. But, relatively democratic, institutionalized and Islamic system of the post-Taliban Afghanistan provided a peaceful approach to the party. Therfore,, the policy of governments, not the construction of a society has led to the emergence of social violence in Afghanistan.

The purpose of this research is the analysis of the carnivalesque in folk culture and the study of the possibility of resistance against predominate-monophonic political power. Predominate paradigm in the thinking area of new age introduces language as a new instrument of world-understanding and takes the language positional and a result of its social context. Voices indicate different interests, profits and ideologies and thus language is known as the area of social-political litigations. According to Bakhtin's opinion, there are two discourses in every society: serious and informal (humour). The first one mostly denotes governorship and power state that is interpreted stern and silent. The second discourse expresses usual life, language and folk literature and popular festivals. Bakhtin interprets carnivals or festivals of humour as the best position of manifestation and formation of resistance and realizing the polyphony and thus democracy. In this research, we had an inquiry to find and analyze the components of carnavality like as polyphony in order to the assessment of the formation of resistance in utterance based on sociological description. According to Bakhtin, there is an obligatory relationship between the emergence of polyphony in autocratic situation and irony in utterance. This research assumes that this relationship is necessary for possibility of resistance in utterance.

Iran and Afghanistan have played an important role in the revival and spread of the political discourse of the late 1980s. So far. The Islamic Revolution of Iran was one of the milestones of the political discourse of Islam, and after that, Afghanistan by defeating the Soviet Union (1988), became a strong point for the transnational spread of the mentioned discourse. During the critical years of this decade, the resistance movement of Afghanistan was considered by Imam Khomeini (RA). He, while redefining and the transnational propagation of Islamic Political Discourse of Iran, believed in the unfavorable situation of Islamism Approach in many Islamic countries. But, the political Islam of the Iranian nation, from the Imam's point of view, was a proper and successful Islamist model in the Islamic world that had the capacity and ability to disseminate and export softly to other countries. The mentioned pattern was not based solely on religion, but also on Iranianship and the scope of Iranian civilization. the main question and issue of this paper is that the political Islam discourse of Afghanistan, what characters represented in the political thought of Imam Khomeini (RA). The authors of the article are seeking to answer this question by using the method of discoursive text analysis and also explaining the political discourse of politics both theoretically (conceptually) and empirically (Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Iran). The hypothesis of Present research is that he described Islamism, jihad, and alienation as one of the most prominent features of the resistance movement in Afghanistan. But due to the divisiveness of the political Islam discourse in Afghanistan, he emphasized the unity of the word in Afghanistan. The findings of the research indicate that Imam Khomeini (RA) from The Perspective of Iranian Model of political Islam has considered to political Islam discourse of Afghanistan.

What is the relationship between literature and revolution? Do literature help revolution or is it the other way around and revolution determines the literature? It seems there have been three stages in development of relationship between these two. In the first stage which is before the time that revolution stabilizes itself, the literature definitely assists the revolution and spreads the revolutionary slogans. When it comes to second stage, during the consolidation of the revolution, the revolutionaries denies independent literature. And finally, in third stage literature tries to departure to hidden transcript of society against the obstacle of political hegemony and split form revolution and its slogans. The “regulation and literature” book, which is a trilogy by Jürgen Ruhle, has explained this paradoxical relationship. This trilogy is a critical study of the literature and communism in the twentieth century. In the first book ruhle has described the sodality and opposition between the Russian authors and October Revolution. In second book he emphasizes on German literature especially Marxist works during 1917 to 1960 and in the third book focuses on the Marxist works in Latin America. In current paper, we try to explain the contradictory relationship between literature and revolution with emphasis on this trilogy. We especially focus on “revolution and literature: Russian writers” book and use new approaches such as Bakhtian formalism, new literary criticism and trans-historical theory.

Huntington’s theory of the clash of civilizations has widely attracted the attention of scholars as well as practitioners in politics. In this article, the reaction of the Iranian political factions and academics towards the theory is explored. As it contains specific views on the Islamic civilization, it has enthusiastically been discussed in Iran. Such views can clarify the attitudes of the Iranian political activists and academics towards the interaction with the West. Hence, the article’s main question is: what is the response of Iranian political groups to the theory of the clash of civilization? The study’s hypothesis is that the theory of the clash of civilizations has provoked different views of rival political discourses in Iran, as one took it to emphasize the continuation of confronting the West and the other arrive at the need for détente in relation with the West. The answer to the question is explored through the analysis of the views of activists relating to competing dominant political discourses as well as those of academics in Iran.

The present study discussed areas of disintegration in the Islamic Cooperation Organization by applying neo-functionalism approach and focusing on structural and environmental conflicts. After the United Nations (UN), the Islamic Cooperation Organization (ICO) is the biggest regional world organization. However, it has suffered from weak performance during its life unlike many regional organizations such as the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU). Moving from organizational levels towards regional and international challenges, we found out that despite the ideological advertisements, the ICO has lost its applications. Cooperation has become impossible for the Islamic countries due to its heterogeneous members with various approaches towards politics, culture and economics especially in the recent decade with new challenges caused by the globalization of culture and politics. The final analysis of this study was that Islamic countries will prefer to join organizations with common economic tendencies in the upcoming decades.

Understanding the mutual relationship between history and literature has always been significant for men of letters. This relationship can be traced back to the writings of Plato and Aristotle. With the emergence of New Historicism in the 1980s, the duality between history and literature, which was the dominant mode of thought since Aristotle, collapsed and with the theories of Hayden White and Greenblatt, who viewed history and literature in a new light, the reciprocal relation of the two was proposed. Hayden White looks at history through the lens of language and believes that historical facts are made through narratives constructed by historians. To Greenblatt, literary texts are tools of power and this gives them the capacity to display the acts of imposing power and resisting it. Connecting history and literature, New Historicism holds power relations as the most important background to a text and regards the literary text as a space for the manifestation of power and the interaction of different discourses. Thus, modern literary criticism puts political texts in a new perspective which allows for political power to be analyzed by means of the tools of literary criticism such as metaphor, metonymy, irony and narrative techniques.