فهرست مطالب mohsen abbaszadeh marzbali

In the age of various republics and democracies with different suffixes, every state seeks to identify itself with a republic and democratic model concomitant with its attitude toward the universe and human being. The objective of this paper is to understand people’s status in the Islamic political system. The main question of this research is as follows:  On the basis of which approach to the Islamic government one can speak of the people’s pivotal role in the Islamic government? The main question of this research is as follows: Which conception of an Islamic state can be considered a basis for central role of the people in an Islamic government? The hypothesis of this research is: A democratic interpretation of the notion of ‘man as vicegerent of God” (Caliph of God) on the earth can be considered a basis for people`s agency and mutual interaction between the people and the political power. As a result, the exercise of legitimate political power will be linked to the representative structures. This approach considers the Islamic state as a ‘civil state,’ which highlights the interactive, democratic model of the Islamic state vis-à-vis the authoritarian model of the Islamic caliphate. To verify the hypothesis, a conceptual framework has been developed, whose constituent elements are: ‘indirect agency, ‘communicative power’ (canonical-normative), and ‘people-based divine sovereignty’. This paper is an attempt to study the ideas of four contemporary modernist Muslim thinkers, i.e., Muhammad Abduh and Abd al-Rahmanal-Kawakibi (the early generations) and Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Rached al-Ghannouchi (in the late era). Descriptive-analytical method has been employed to analyze the data collected through library research and internet sources.

The experiences of Islamism in the 20th and the early 21st centuries are associated with a variety of images: from fundamentalists’ radical Islam (like ISIS) to moderate Islamists` democratism (like the Ennahda Movement). As we have witnessed in the aftermath of Arab Spring, this variety is continuing to affect any speculation on the future hegemonies of Islamism. Which formations can one imagine about the future of Islamism, and what variables would be of great importance? The present research hypothesizes that there might still be two potential alternatives or, in the sense of Weber, Ideal types: civil Islamic state vs. religious one. The actualization of both ties with the way of interaction of intellectual variables and social conditions. At the intellectual level, the ‘approach to religion’ is the matter. It means while rational interpretation of the Sharia (Ijtihad) would pave the way for democracy promotion under a civil conception of an Islamic state, the mythical (Fundamentalist) one, especially in combination with instrumental rationality, will lead to Islamic totalitarianism under a religious conception of an Islamic state. However, the actualization of any imagined alternatives is determinately intertwined with the quality of some social variables such as economic development, national sovereignty, cultural atmosphere, and political opportunity structure. The paper maintains that the experience of various Islamist movements, from the early 20th century, provides facts to justify the hypothesis. To do so, it will articulate the collected data within a ‘comparative analysis’ framework concentrating on ‘the role of interaction between intellectual framework and the social condition’ in the practice of the main typical trends in Islamism: the moderates and the radicals. Ultimately, the paper seeks to highlight ‘the past’ for speculating the possible ‘future’.

As one of the most visible aspects of political life in recent years, the populist rises imply the ‘crisis of representation’ that means the existing institutional mechanism of representative democracy is ineffective in representing the variety of social demands. While this situation, according to the liberal democratic approach, warns of the revival of mass society and new versions of authoritarianism, the radical democratic approach considers it a possibility to retrieve democracy. Which variables determine the contending evaluations of the impact of populism on democracy? The present paper presupposes that the contending evaluations are driven by different conceptions of the principal constituent of democracy (rule of law or general will?) and the populism entity (a manner of governance or a movement constructing collective will?). Given the postulates of the contending democratic theories (liberal and radical), the paper hypothesizes that evaluating the effects of populism on democracy depends on the way of interaction of some variables: a) the content of the populist discourse (egalitarian articulation of plural demands or discriminatory one?); b) the context in which the populist movement arises (democratic structure of opportunity or authoritarian one?) c) the mutual strategy of political actors whether from opposition or in position ones (the connection between street politics and institutional one or disconnection?). Taking advantage of the contending democratic theories (liberal and radical) in a combinative theoretical framework, the paper attempts to justify the hypothesis by highlighting the fact that both democratic theories are built on one aspect of the conception of democratic order. Marking the elements such as individual subjectivity, rationality, the rule of law, pluralism, etc. as characteristics of democratic order, a liberal democratic approach considers populist popular and exclusionary (i.e., determined by populists’ particular definition of the people) orientation as a threat to democracy. It is because such orientation restricts public debates and leads to weakening democratic institutions, the opposition’s rights, and the plurality of society. On the contrary, the radical democratic approach points to the significance of the populist mobilization for the democratization of status quo democracies owing to re-politicization of the issues neglected by the sovereign elite, provided that to articulate accumulated demands around a democratic egalitarian nodal point. Such evaluation emanates from the fact that this approach identifies democracy with collective subjectivity, general will, participation, and so on. It seems that a non-paradoxical and justifiable reference to both the above-mentioned approach in an analysis of the effect of populism on democracy entails taking their different concentrations into account. It means ‘populism-in-power’ (as a way of governance) puts the structural foundations of democracy in danger and facilitates the emergence of authoritarianism due to its anti-institutionalism, anti-pluralism, and tendency to mass politics. It is whilst, in the status of ‘opposition’ (a mobilizing movement), populism might be an opportunity to revive democratic politics. This argument resorts to the action of constructing a new collective will, in populist strategies of mobilizations, which reveals shortages of representative systems such as the monopoly of a minority, technocratic elitism, and so on. Nevertheless, the actualization of the progressive effects of the populist movements on democracy depends heavily on the interaction of variables which are as follows.   a) If the populist discourse articulates accumulated social demands around a democratic egalitarian will, then the populist moment (as the moment of crisis in a representative democracy) can be of progressive connotations for democracy-deepening. Conversely, discriminatory articulation (like racist or class populism) paves the way for authoritarianism. Hence in terms of democratization and de-democratization, various populisms can be imagined; ranging from democratic populism to authoritarian, leftist to far-right. b)  Realization of the above-mentioned progressive version of populism depends on the ‘democratic structure of political opportunity’. The possibility of mobilization by democratic egalitarian populism is only imaginable where the rules of the democratic competition are guaranteed. In other words, if there is no equal and fair opportunity to declare the policies in electoral campaigns and implement them after taking into power, then there can be just governmental types of populism that mobilize the mass for advocating governmental policies and decisions. Here, populism appears in its authoritarian face in a mass society. c) The third variable is the strategy that political actors of both realms, movement, and institution, in a political structure adapt. If the populist movement ties its street activism with institutional bargaining (e.g. by resorting to parliamentary parties) and, mutually, the government opens up the policy-making input to populist demands (rather than rejecting them), then the rise of a democratic egalitarian populist movement might result in democracy- deepening. Otherwise, populism can bring about some contending de-democratizing mass mobilizations, whether in the shape of authoritarian up-to-down governmental populism or fruitless gross-root radical populism. In brief, the paper maintains that by vindicating ‘popular sovereignty’, populism has double-edged effects in terms of weakening or strengthening democracy; ranging from an infertile radicalism leading to authoritarianism to radical reformism containing the possibility of retrieval of democracy. Hence democratic theory needs to develop an order that balances the rule of law and public will as two sides of democracy. It calls for a new social contract based on a balanced relationship between specialism and democratic responsibility. To reach such a situation, more inclusive politics should be targeted by current-day democracies. The key, however, is hearing the demands of populist advocators rather than populist leaders’ programs.

Of the most unexpected events in the year, 2021 was the collapse of the Afghanistan government, on August 15th, 2021, and the re-emergence of the Taliban’s Islamic state (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) without facing up serious resistance from the state and society. How can one analyze the Taliban`s takeover of the country? This is the central question that guides the analytical narration in the text. The present research attempts to come up with a multi-faceted scheme to respond to the question. In this regard, the paper hypothesizes that the Taliban movement managed to retrieve its sovereignty owing to symmetry of some factors: its internal social solidarity/ coherence in the context of Afghanistan’s segmented society and failed state, and connivance in the international environment as well. To justify the hypothesis, the paper takes advantage of some theoretical approaches under a combinative theoretical framework. The constituents are as follows: the concept of ‘Asabiyyah’ (social solidarity in Ibn Khalodn's sense of the word), ‘resource mobilization theory, the quadruple crisis of the regime, and the role of the international environment in revolutionary transformation. According to the framework, the Taliban`s mobility to conquer the country was proceeding continually because of internal social solidarity driven by its ethnic (Pashtunism) and religious (Deobandi Salafi) foundations. It is whilst, on the contrary, there had been a segmented society and failed state due to a crisis in the process of nation-state building. Consequently, not only was there were lack of national solidarity and united orientation against the coherent ethnoreligious movement of the Taliban, but also the Taliban utilized the government’s inefficacies and miss-functions (such as juncture and corruption in the political system) to mobilize the followers and attract the potential ones among the disappointed people. In terms of the process of capturing the country, the Taliban’s mobility pattern showed some formal similarities to ‘Eastern Revolutions’ (in Huntington's sense of the word); that is, launching from the periphery to the capital. Having learned from the past, the Taliban came up with a more pragmatic orientation in its second round. While showing a tendency to negotiate with internal and foreign effective agents in the political environment of Afghanistan, the Taliban aimed to represent a modified picture of the movement compared to the long-standing violent image. To sum up, the causes of the Taliban`s success in re-taking political power can be narrated as the symmetry of the strong movement and the weak nation-state; the ethnoreligious social solidarity of the Taliban, and the lack of national solidarity and efficient government. Afghanistan went through difficult times in 2021. It was not yet summer when those provinces came under the pressure of the Taliban fighting forces and then dominoes fell one after another until the Taliban forces reached the gates of Kabul. Finally, in the middle of August, to the surprise of the world, the capital fell and the Taliban managed to seize power in Afghanistan for the second time and start a rapid transformation in the Afghan political system in order to revive the Islamic Emirate that was overthrown in 2001. There are factors involved in the occurrence of this transformation, some of which are the responsibility of the Afghan government and the others part of the United States: 1. The announcement of the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan; 2. Weakness and a deep gap in the leadership of the Afghan government; 3. The deep gap between army and country policies; 4. Perpetuation of the corrupting incomes caused by drugs, as well as increasing the Taliban's income generation from local sources; 5. Denial of many problems in the organization, training, equipment, and leadership of Afghan forces at least from 2007 onwards by the US, NATO, and the Afghan government; 6. The low level of readiness of the Afghan army due to dependence on American forces; 7. Dependence of Afghan forces on contractors for equipment; 8. The wrong focus of America and NATO on only the terrorist and military threat of the Taliban instead of evaluating the reasons for their increasing progress, 9. Focusing only on the cities and densely populated centers and leaving the villages and suburbs; 10. Not paying attention to the strategy of the Taliban, which was preparing for a massive advance toward the north and other regions at the same time as the peace talks. This development has been analyzed from different perspectives, such as examining the causes of the weakness of the Afghan government, the role of foreign powers, its impact on the future of Afghanistan, regional relations, and its threats and opportunities for Iran. What distinguishes the current research is the focus on analyzing why and how this political transformation occurred from the perspective of "revolutionary transformation theories". In this context, the question is raised, how to analyze the Taliban's re-gaining power? The nature and context of the recent political transformation in Afghanistan have been such that the fixation on one of the common divisions of revolutionary transformations (revolution, coup, civil war, etc.) hinders the understanding of the various dimensions and complexities of this transformation. Based on this, the current research is based on the hypothesis that the theoretical analysis of this event requires a combination of old and new theories about the logic of political transformation. In this sense, the Taliban's ethnoreligious movement, relies on the element of nervousness, in the conditions of the crisis of the nation-state in Afghanistan, i.e. a mixture of a fragmented society and a bankrupt government and symmetry with suitable international conditions, without facing serious resistance from the society, the government and successful foreign actors to restore its sovereignty in Afghanistan. The way this transformation took place was similar to the style of eastern revolutions, advancing from the periphery to conquering the capital. The present research consists of several parts. First, in the form of a combined theoretical framework, the theoretical possibilities of old and new theories are highlighted in the direction of designing the elements of a conceptual model. In the next steps, we show the implications and examples of each of the elements of this combined theoretical framework for the analysis of the Taliban's resumption of power. In order, to the importance of nervousness in the group cohesion of the Taliban, the effect of social disintegration and the absence of the national government on the non-formation of anti-mobilization against the Taliban, and symmetry with the appropriate international conditions in the transfer of power. In the end, by freely using the style of eastern revolutions, we explain the formation of this transformation (how the Taliban advance).

Modern Democracy has been facing various crises historically. The current crisis is rooted in a dual origin. On the one hand, orientation to shape a hidden quasi-oligarchic state and, on the other hand, the eternal specter of populism. Where this dilemma originates from and what effects do both have on democratic order? to respond to this central question, the paper hypothesizes that the origin of the dilemma traces back to reductionist conceptions on two dimensions of modern democracy; that is, on the one side, an elitism inherent to liberal-capitalist (more especially, neo-liberal) structures that makes democratic policy-making dependent on the requirements of the capitalist system. On the other side, an implicit populist potentiality of democratic structure weakens the rule of law due to resorting to ‘ordinary people’. To justify the hypothesis, the paper takes advantage of comparative analysis, as a theoretical framework, of approaches to defining democratic legitimacy; i.e. philosophical (normative) and sociological (descriptive). The research is conducted in an analytical–descriptive method and library-based data gathering. In conclusion, overcoming the crisis of modern democracy entails strengthening the participatory quality of democracy to make an equilibrium between the majority and the minority. Participatory democracy seems the structure in which normative and descriptive conceptions of legitimacy can overlap.

Aiming to give an applied analysis on the significance of ‘meaning system’ in the genesis, justification and direction of violent actions of Salafi radical groups, the present paper seeks to address the main question that ‘how can one relates political violence to religion’?    Building ona descriptive- analytical method for analyzing the data collected from library and internet resources, the paper articulates the data in a theoretical framework extracted from ideology studies. It is because the paper hypothesizes that the linkage between violence and religion in Jihadi Salafism might be found in the ideologization of the religion. Due to the reduction of religion to an ideology within Salafi fundamentalist / mythical approach, not only violence might be theoretically justified but also accompanied by some jurisprudential patterns for implementation. To explain, the paper initiates by highlighting the mechanism of justification of violence according to the radical Salafi worldview. Then, it concentrates on Nekayeh (destruction), Tavahosh (savagery), and Tamkin (establishment) as jurisprudential concepts, pointing to the justifiability of brutality as the necessary step in constructing the sovereignty, which actually serves jihadists` political strategy of obtaining, maintaining, and expanding the hegemony. The paper maintains that adapting such a theoretical framework helps to articulate the ‘politics of violence’ in Jihadi Salafism as a combinative phenomenon; containing both the traditional worldview (Salafism) and modern phenomenon (instrumental rationality aiming at domination). ISIS`s performance would provide relevant examples.

The prevalence of reductionist dualisms, driven from some conceptual opposites such as realism vs. constructivism or rationalism vs. relativism, has been one of the most significant impacts of post-positivist challenge in epistemology. How one can explain ‘rationality’, as objective examination of reasonability of a sentence or standpoint, despite the challenges driven from anti-foundationalism? To respond the question, the present paper hypothesizes that such possibility can be found in a particular narrative of Pragmatism which is founded on a commonsensical perception of reality and practical definition of the reasonable. A feature in rationalistic process of examining the scientific sentences or normative standpoints on which the principle of the truth / rational validity might be founded is the axis to the above-mentioned explanation. The feature is “deliberation” and openness to verification. Accordingly, the present paper seeks to highlight a central common feature by which a wide range of theorists in fields of philosophy of science and social science epistemology could be interrelated. Inasmuch as the narrative deals with issues like the nature of reality and the conditions required for acquiring rational understanding of the reasonability, the paper would be organized based on a meta-theoretical framework driven from Aristotle`s notion of Pharonisis.

The International Relations Course was basically under the dominion of positivistic realistic (and in its newest form, the neorealistic) tendencies, and accordingly provided some concepts as a basis for analyzing the international relation and global policies. But since 1980s and under the influence of the changes caused by the emerge of post structuralist and post modernist approaches in the area of social sciences, the science of international relations, too, experienced some theoretical changes. Intellectuals who used post modernist approach in the area of international relations, emphasized that the basic concepts and the foundations of analyzing the international relations theories are basically some theoretical constructs which the traditional realistic approach has imposed as reality on the area of analyzing the international relations. Consequently, these intellectuals focused their attempts on the deconstructing investigation of these, superficially, realities; of course, in this paper the discussion is merely focused on investigating the concept of sovereign national state and its challenges in today's changed (either theoretically or objectively) age. The abstracts compiled in this paper dont have any aim but provide a general schema of the method of the post modern attitude in the international relations.