فهرست مطالب

World Sociopolitical Studies
Volume:3 Issue: 2, Spring 2019

  • تاریخ انتشار: 1398/01/12
  • تعداد عناوین: 6
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  • Javad Sharbaf * Pages 233-270
    Due to both internal and external factors, Western Asia has long been suffering from security problems and political instability. The institution of various military and militia groups in the region in the absence of powerful central governments is the focal point of the crises, where the internal and external factors meet. The development of such security and military interactions outside the sovereignty framework paves the way for foreign interventions, making the region unstable in the long run. Working at times as proxy agents, these groups take action in the absence of a powerful stable central government in short term, and set the ground for sustained unrest, dispersion and the development of irresponsible armed groups in long term. These groups proliferate when the central governments lack the necessary persuasive power or have lost the ability to manage crises and to exercise exclusive power for reasons such as lack of effective military power, disagreement over the quality of interaction with opposition groups, losing the monopoly of military power, the intervention of regional or transboundary powers, high financial and organizing abilities of the militia, etc. This article is based on the hypothesis that the development and continuous growth of non-state armed groups stems from various internal and external reasons, causing crisis in countries and security environments. The most crucial way out of this crisis is empowering the central government through national cohesiveness, general consensus, and the exclusive practice of hard power based on the law.
    Keywords: fragile state, Military Power, non-state armed groups, unstable security, Western Asia
  • Reza Bagheri * Pages 271-304
    Since the 9/11 bombings in New York, and the 7/7 bombings in London,Muslims’ integration in the UK has been under intense scrutiny. Muslimintegration, however, has long been a matter of debate in Britain, revolvingaround the maintenance of Muslims’ distinctive identity and practice. Forinstance, David Cameron (Cameron, 2011), Britain’s then Prime Minister,announced at the Munich Security Conference that “state multiculturalism”has encouraged “different cultures to live separate lives, apart from eachother and apart from the mainstream”. In criticizing multiculturalism, mostcritics mainly refer to Muslims as being less integrated into wider societythan people from other minority groups, and Muslims are shown to bedisloyal. The complexity of Muslims’ integration and its dependency ondifferent social, structural and cultural factors are, however, mostly lessstudied. This paper is designed to understand the social and cultural barriersto Muslim integration. In doing so, it aims to explore Muslims’ integrationalstrategies to deal with these barriers. Findings of this paper draw on researchthat involved 43 semi-structured interviews with Muslims across Scotland’smajor cities and small towns.
    Keywords: Integration, Islamophobia, Muslims, Religion, Scotland
  • Masoueh Mahmoudian *, Aliasghar Firozjayan, Mohammadreza Taleban Pages 305-343
    Considering corruption as one of the chronic harms of the administrative system,and the social factor affecting economic growth, the present study sought toexplain, for the first time, the differences in the perceived levels of corruptionamong 16 Southwest Asian countries, relying on the sociological “newinstitutionalism” theory in analyzing organizations, describing causalmechanisms and their mutual impact, and creating corruptive contexts. Thefuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Method (fsQCA) and the secondary data wereused to find the causal configurations leading to corruption in these cases. Theexperimental judgment led to two causal configurations showing that someinstitutional requirements of the institutional environment, in contrast to therequirements of the technical environment, exacerbated the gap between formaland informal structures. Conflicts lead to the formation of informal norms andnetworks that, over time, provide shared mental patterns for actors in executingcurrent actions and confronting ambiguity and uncertainty; and on the basis ofcontextual rationality, they are interpreted as an appropriate way of acting. Thisreduces the costs of corruption and increases the opportunity for abuse bydiminishing supervision and control and strengthening informal networks.
    Keywords: Causal Configurations, corruption, Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, Institutionalism, Southwest Asia
  • Maziar Mozaffari Falarti *, Hamideh Molaei, Asra Karim Pages 345-377
    This study investigates the representations of Hindu-Muslim relationship inBollywood movies from 2008 to 2018. It is assumed that after 2008 Mumbaiterrorist attacks, which are known as 26/11, conflicts between Hindus andMuslims have escalated. Since Indian people are extreme fans of movies,especially Bollywood movies, in this regard, it is expected that media could playa significant role in increasing or alleviating the conflicts by influencing people’sattitudes and opinions. This research seeks to examine the extent and modality ofthe representation of Hindu-Muslim relationships in Bollywood after the 2008Mumbai attacks. The study was conducted through a content analysis of 11Bollywood movies, which were selected from 70 Muslim-characters-basedmovies. Favorable, unfavorable, neutral and unclear were the four factorsthrough which the movies’ contents were analyzed. The overall analysis of thesefactors indicate that 66.17% of the scenes were favorable, 14.70% wereunfavorable, 2.94% were neutral, and 16.17% presented unclear images ofHindu-Muslim relationship in Bollywood movies. The results also indicate thatBollywood is not only depicting a positive image of this relationship, but alsotries to tighten the bonds of the two religions, and in a broader sense, ties the twoneighboring countries, Pakistan and India.
    Keywords: Bollywood, Hindu-Muslim relationship, Mumbai Attacks 26, 11, Representation
  • Arash Dousti, Reza Saboonchi *, Mahdi Shariati Feizabadi Pages 379-407
    The purpose of this study is to identify the role of sport as a soft power for Iranto facilitate its diplomatic relations after the nuclear deal. The research methodused in this study is mixed (qualitative and quantitative): in the qualitative part ofthe analysis, the study sample was selected via Snowball sampling based onpartricipants’ expertise in the sport diplomacy of Iran after two rounds of FuzzyDelphi Method (FDM) exploratory factor analysis. Seven components ofpolitical currents, cultural exchange, peacemaking, national unity, economicdevelopment, transformation, communication, and religious currents wereextracted. After identifying the study’s research variables in a structuralinterpretivemodeling, the relationship between variables was examined througha structural equation modeling test. The results of the structural equation modelindicated that political currents, cultural exchange, transformation andcommunication had a direct and significant effect on national unity. Therelationship between political and peacebuilding was not confirmed, but nationalunity and excellence in peace diplomacy had a direct and significant impact onthe economic development of societies.
    Keywords: diplomacy, Fuzzy Delphi Method, Iran, Peace, Sport
  • Elham Kadkhodaee * Pages 409-444
    Research on the special relationship between the United States and Israel hasusually been focused on strategic aspects, whilst fewer scholars have focusedon non-material dimensions of the relationship. In addition, the existingresearch is mostly confined to the political and decision-making realms, withvery few excursions into the academic arena. The current article aims to fillthis lacuna through the study of pro-Israel academic discourse in America,focusing on the specific case of the field of terrorism studies. Criticaldiscourse analysis of pro-Israel academic texts in this field is carried out toreveal the discourse, themes and arguments used to build this ideational pillarof the special relationship and move towards a common identity between theUS and Israel. The common ingroup identity model (CIIM) is used todescribe the process through which a common identity is constructed. Thearticle concludes that defining the Self, defining the Other, and defining thenorms are the three main strategies employed in the studied texts to achievethis goal.
    Keywords: academic discourse, common identity, Israel, Israel advocates, special relationship, terrorism, United States