Strategic Studies Quarterly

Abstract This article studies the role of legislature branch in creating security and recounting the causes and roots of inefficiency of parliaments in performing their securing functions and recognizes the necessary conditions for parliament to govern national security and how to achieve these conditions. In this regard, the role of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in good security governance in Iran will also be discussed. Parliaments need institutions such as free, fair and frequent elections, freedom of expression, alternative sources of information, independent organizations, and integrated citizenship to consolidate national security. Economic progress, the absence of a wide gap in economic and social inequalities, the existence of democratic cultural foundations (such as tolerance of dissent, consensus on the democratic method, etc.), non-preference of individual, ethnic and group interests over national interests and lack of foreign intervention are some tools for the continuity and proper functioning of parliament in order to strengthen national security. Until the aforementioned conditions and equipment are provided, no parliament, including the Islamic Consultative Assembly, will be able to perform its functions optimally in order to increase the national security coefficient.

Abstract The analysis of elections mainly focuses on the political acts and behaviors of the parties as well as interest groups of a society and describes the central reference of political fractions (for instants reformists or conservatives) that try to defeat the competing political wings. Using documentary method, the paper attempts to study the sociological aspect of the electoral behavior.  According to this approach, the inspiring sources of participation in the elections are social, environmental, economic and cultural conditions of the voters; as there exists a direct relationship between the social conditions of the voters and their political orientation. Therefore, the author studies the electoral behavior of the voters for the parliamentary elections in Iran and to this end he enjoys three models of political sociology, political economy and political psychology.