Strategic Studies Quarterly

Abstract Politicization in the general sense refers to the involvement and preference of political and group motives and interests in judgments and decisions. In the field of governance, politicization is the non-observance of neutrality in policy-making and decision-making and the interference of political views, tendencies and biases in professional affairs; which may occur at different levels and patterns. Although politicization is one of the most important harms and inefficiencies in all areas of governance, it has more destructive consequences in the field of national security governance. In such a case, agents, political actors, and strategic and intelligence analysts intervene in their political preferences at various stages, such as: subject selection, data collection, information processing and analysis, and report production. They abandon objectivism in favor of political interests. This study examines the prominent trends and events in the field of national security governance in Iran, examines the dimensions and effectiveness of this issue and its findings show that politicization in forms such as polarization, influence, parallelism and disclosure or leakage of information entails significant political and security costs. Accordingly, suggestions have been made for controlling politicization or managing its harmful consequences.

Abstract Many experts believe that transparency, greater access to information, and better flow of information help increase the accountability of governments and state officials and eventually help stem corruption and improve governance, which leads to an establishment's sustainability. In recent years, things such as unjustifiably high salaries and benefits, unjustifiable provision of properties and extra benefits at municipalities, the manner in which government-subsidized foreign currency is provided to importers of goods, etc are an indication of not-so-transparent processes, which are the result of lack of transparent information and flawed performance of supervisory organizations. This article discusses the important role of free access to information in improving the efficiency of governance and demonstrates that access to information in Iran is not as it should be and that supervisory organizations face a conflict and multiplicity of responsibilities. It also puts forward some proposals that could help improve information dissemination and supervisory structures in the country.
 
 

Abstract  The paper discuses the social factors influencing electoral behavior of the Iranians. It begins with a discussion on the sociological analysis of electoral behavior and the literature review consequently it applies the theoretical findings on the practical data in Iran and highlights the social factors influencing electoral behavior of the Iranians. The author concludes that the analysis of Iranian’s electoral behavior is very complicated and in this way one should pay attention to different elements such as social class of the voters, ethnic identity of the voters and the candidates, gender of the candidates and the age of voters. Of course there are other effective factors like religion, political system and the model of political acts of the voters, discussing the role of which, is beyond the scope of this paper. It is worth mentioning that the author provides us with several examples of electoral behavior in the past and emphasizes that the social factors are not of a single nature and they can be understood when they are interlinked.  

Abstract The paper intends to analyze the Iranian social capital in light of the JCPOA. Therefore, all events and trends observed in Iran after conclusion of the JCPOA are assumed as indicators for demonstrating the Iranian social capital. In this way, some implicit and explicit functions of the nuclear talks, the process of decision making in Iran, role of reference groups and citizens with respect to the talks that can strengthen or weaken the Iranian social capital are analyzed in this paper.