International Journal of New Political Economy
Volume:2 Issue: 2, Summer-Autumn 2021

The theory presented in this paper serves to explain the roots of Iranian history, past and present, and may well be relevant to other countries of the Middle East and North Africa as well. Iran was a short-term society in contrast to Europe’s long-term society. It was a society in which change - even important and fundamental change - tended to be a short-term phenomenon. This was precisely due to the absence of an established and inviolable legal framework which would guarantee long term continuity. Lack of long-term continuity, by definition, resulted in significant change from one short period to the next, such that history became a series of connected short runs. In this sense, therefore, change was more frequent - usually also more drastic - and as noted, social mobility across various classes considerably higher than in traditional European societies.

This articles addresses the question of private prisons from the perspective of human rights and comes to the conclusion that private prisons should be abolished under the current circumstances.[1] This human rights approach is not based on religious and theological arguments (which, however, are powerful for those who share the corresponding religious and theological views[2]). Rather, it is of ethical-philosophical nature and grounded in the International Bill of Rights, which includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976) and eight core conventions of the International Labor Organization. This International Bill of Rights constitutes the normative foundation of the UN Framework (2008) and UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011) (cf. Enderle 2021). They contain 30 internationally recognized human rights and apply to all – public and private – business enterprises around the world. States have the duty to “protect” and “remedy” human rights while business enterprises are responsible to “respect” (independently from states) and “remedy” human rights (in collaboration with states). Most recently, the U.S. Department of State published the Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights (Report 2020), which reinforces the human rights incorporated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[1]. It is an answer to the call for “Re-Learning the Human Rights Language” (Enderle 2020).[2]. To refer to a few examples: Protestant Christianity (along with the civic republican ideal and classical liberalism) “contributed to the core conviction that government’s primary responsibility was to secure unalienable rights – that is, rights inherent in all persons” (U.S. Department of State [2020], 8; see Footnote 2). Pope John XXIII embraced and supported the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in his 1963 Encyclical Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”; §§143-144). The Second Vatican Council highlighted the dignity and fundamental rights of the human person in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes (1965; especially §§12-22).

In cryptocurrencies, consensus protocols are considered as one of the fundamental differences in the mechanism of their creation. The purpose of this paper is time series clustering of daily prices of cryptocurrencies during 2015 to 2020 using time series clustering algorithm. This research attempts to cluster the time series of twenty cryptocurrencies that have different consensus protocols such as algorithm designed to proof of work, proof of stake or proof of a subject, algorithm designed for voting and so on. The results of this study show that cryptocurrencies are in a specific group with a proof of work mechanism such as Bitcoin and Litecoin. Zcash, Tron, Obyte, Neo, Iota, and EOS are also in a separate group with new consensus mechanisms, including a Directed acyclic graph algorithm. Stellar, Monero, and Ripple cryptocurrencies are also clustered in a group with almost similar mechanisms. This indicates that the time series of cryptocurrencies with similar creation mechanisms and consensus have the same behavior and are in the same cluster.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting the: Election Campaign Finance of parliamentary elections in Iran. The spatial scope of this study was the financial expenses of the candidates for the Islamic Consultative Assembly in the tenth election of Rasht Township in Guilan province. This study was conducted in the period of spring 2020 to the end of spring 2021. The main question that the researcher sought to answer is: What are the factors affecting the financial costs of the parliamentary elections in Iran? The mixed method was used to achieve the research objectives - distributed a questionnaire with a sample size of 379 people and semi-in-depth interviews with ten activists and parliamentary candidates.In terms of theoretical framework, both the agency and rational choice of political actors and the impact of the structures and institutional position of the political electoral machine in Iran have been considered. The results of the study showed that the most important factors influencing the methods of financing parliamentary elections in Iran are: historical contexts and political culture, political knowledge of voters, MP-citizen linkage, citizens' attitudes toward the electoral system, number and variety of sponsors and their motives, the type of political system, social and political divisions, and the economic situation of society. Among the mentioned factors, the citizen's relationship with the memberof parliament and the type of political system have the most impact on how the parliamentary elections are financed. Almost 95% of the respondents emphasized that in authoritarian electoral regimes, the short-term interests of citizens, especially their sponsors, take precedence over other matters, and that there is a kind of institutionalized supportive relationship that goes beyond the issue of elections and for reproduction and continuity during the past decades have affected all aspects of the lives of citizens in different parts of the province, and by weakening the democratic process, it has provided numerous and complex contexts for all kinds of corruption. The findings also suggest that in order to reduce the adverse consequences of the methods of financing and spending political money, current laws should be reviewed and the experiences of other countries should be used.

Housing is a substantial part of the economy with a significant role in GDP, investment and employment. The growth of this sector will result in prosperity of other sectors of the economy because of its many backward and forward linkages. The recent fluctuations in Iran’s housing price have transmitted to the whole economy and turned to a big challenge. It has been argued in the literature that the demographic factors are also affecting housing price, besides economic forces.The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of changing demographic factors (population aging and population growth rate) alongside macroeconomic variables on housing price in Iran. Using an ARDL model and data for 1973-2018, we find that population growth rate, real per capita income and real construction costs have positive impact on housing price both in short and long run while real price of gold coin and population ageing have negative effect, of course with weaker effect in the short run. Since the model is in logarithmic form, the coefficients become elasticities and comparable to each other. So, the most significant and effective factors in determining housing price, are population ageing, population growth rate, real construction costs, real gold price and real per capita income respectively.

Theories of Islamic Shuracracy (a theory of political system in Islam) on the one hand and Deliberative Democracy (a theory of political system in the West) on the other, can be considered as the main outcomes of recent intellectual developments in both Islamic and Western thoughts. This article, in addition to elaborating on, and comparing of these theories, seeks to reconsider the relationship between Islam and Democracy in order to propose the idea of compatibility between Islam and Deliberative Democracy. For the author, these theories are compatible in the sense that they accept the process of “deliberation” in making the main political and social decision. The adherents of these theories stress on consensus and mutual understanding instead of majority vote as the necessary criteria of legitimacy. These similarities rises the main question of this paper: What is the main cause of these similarities? Answering to this question, this paper tries to explain the recent intellectual developments in the Islamic thought in understanding Religion and in the West though in understanding Reason as the main epistemological resources of them.

In only a decade, Kazakhstan has become China's second-biggest partner behind Russia in the post- Soviet space. Economic relations between Astana and Beijing are characterized by a considerable imbalance of power that is of concern in some political and expert circles in Kazakhstan. At the same time, the tremendous opportunity for development offered by China's proximity brings hope that the country might be extricated from the crisis that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This paper claims that China's energy policy in Kazakhstan is a part of its broader geopolitical approach towards the region that includes economic and infrastructure links; fight against the so-called "three evils" (terrorism, separatism, and extremism); evicting U.S. bases, limiting Russia's influence and using a multilateral organization like the SCO. This paper analyses Kazakh-China relations' various energy dimensions, which have strong relevance in the Kazakhstan energy sector because energy security stimulates a nation's economic development. It emphasizes the overall Kazakh-China relations and discusses the relevance of Kazakhstan energy from China's perspective.

The Arab Spring’s wave arrived in Syria on 26 January 2011 and the unrest flared up on 15 March 2011 in the city of Daraa, 58 kilometers south of Damascus. Since then, Syria has been immersed in a civil war. The Security Council adopted different measures to contain this crisis. The main objective of the present research is to analyze the performance of the United Nations Security Council in tackling the Syrian crisis. The findings of the present research imply that the Security Council, in its role as a conflict moderator, has shown a positive performance particularly in such areas as instituting ceasefire, deploying peacekeeping forces, promoting humanitarian activities, facilitating the political transition process, securing the territorial integrity of the country, assisting the refugees and controlling Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. Even so, this body, due to the veto power of the permanent members, the complex nature of the crisis, and the conflictual interests of Russia and the United States and regional actors, has not been spectacularly successful in the termination of the armed conflict and enforcing peace. In order to explicate the matter, a descriptive-analytical method based on qualitative content analysis has been utilized and the library, internet-based resources, and United Nations documents have been used.

One of the most important events of the current century has been the spread of the COVID19 and its devastating effects on the world economy. Because this disease is a pandemic, as a result, it has challenged all economies in some ways and it has had consequences such as unemployment, poverty, negative economic growth, and so on. So, this is a kind of task that we should survey and investigate this destructive impacts and its results on economy and try to overcome. On the other hand, events have occurred simultaneously in the world that can affect the economies of countries such as Brexit. Economic considerations are one of the questions that will weigh on MPs’ minds when they come to scrutinize and vote on the Government’s EU withdrawal agreement. This article summarizes what is known about the long-term economic impact of Brexit and answer questions that may arise in the minds of readers. This article consists of two main parts: the first part is about investigate the effect of COVID19 on UK economy and new COVID. The second part is about investigate the consequences of BREXIT on UK economy. The main contribution of the article is that we have surveyed the effect of COVID19 and Brexit on the UK economy in details in different dimensions such as economic means GDP, jobs, services, industries and etc. and social life and their lifestyle changes means business activities, education, transportation and etc. The main goal of this article is investigation the consequences of COVID19 and Brexit on UK economy simultaneously. The research is done by exploring of the latest economic analysis related to the COVID-19 pandemic in order to identify its effects on UK economy throughout 2020 and Brexit too. The results show that improving economic conditions is a long-term matter and Brexit will definitely have an impact on the future of the UK and some other countries.

This paper has made an attempt to theoretically predict US-China trade relationship under Joe Biden administration formed after the US presidential election in 2020. The author has utilized the published sources such as journal articles, newspapers and Internet to sought information. The author argues that, after evaluating the information, China will continually be under pressure regarding the bilateral trade from the current US administration. The pressure will be the outcome of aggregate US national interest (trade and political) and the long term US opposing culture against China’s rise (economically and politically). However, the author further expects that such opposition will not be as severe as the Trump administration’s period. The papers is expected to be useful for the trade analysis, MNCs and researchers alike for conducting new policy analysis and further research investigations regarding bilateral trade in a disputed political context.

The present article focuses on some significant aspects of COVID-19 outbreak from the perspective of criminology, as a specific discipline in social and criminal sciences. As a criminological enterprise, two main topics are considered in the light of the aim and scope of the present journal in the field of economics and politics from a comparative viewpoint between Iran’s and world’s Data, as appropriate. These topics include the issues of criminal justice policy which encompass the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on criminal policies relating to or arising from crime rates, emphasizing on economic crimes, and in area of criminal justice system, focusing on the prison system and prevention of crime. The article concludes that the current pandemic has serious impacts on crime rates and criminal justice policies based on the assumption that ‘disease’ alongside ‘crime’ endanger physical and mental aspects of human health.

The purpose of this study is to investigate nonlinear effects of prices and the volatility of gold, oil, and exchange rate variables on the stock price index in Iran during March 2008 to April 2019. In this regard, first the volatility of oil, gold, exchange rate and stock price index variables is calculated using the MRS-GARCH technique and then the relationship between these variables is investigated using a Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag model (NARDL). The results indicate that oil and gold price variables have positive and negative effects in the short and long run on the stock price index in Iran, but the volatility of these two variables does not have a significant effect on the stock price index. The results also show that exchange rate depreciation exerts a negative and significant effect on the stock price index in the short and long run, but the exchange rate increase in both periods does not have a significant effect on the stock market. Therefore, exchange rate has an asymmetric effect on the stock price index, while the results indicate the positive and significant effect of volatility of stock price index on the stock price index.