Strategic Studies Quarterly

Abstract  
This article attempts to provide a picture of existing attitudes on political culture in Iran with a review of the research done over the last hundred years. The findings of the research show that most of these studies are based on positivist view and in the framework of Almond and Verba theory. From the methodological point of view, most of them are based on survey or documentary-historical methods. Studies related to political culture in Iran during this period show that Iranian political culture has been relatively stable over the past hundred years; political culture is viewed in the sense of national character; political culture is an obstacle to political development; and, of course, these studies suffer from some kind of Orientalist constructivism.
 

Abstract

According to the constructivism, the states are not like economic actors who make decisions and behave due to the consequence logic, but they are social actors who have act based on relevance logic (their own identity). Therefore, to appreciate the foreign policy of the states, first one should bear in mind the Inter-subjective foundations of their identity; the foundations that can influent the shape of the identity and lead towards a special behaviour at the national and international levels. The purpose of this paper is to study the Inter-subjective foundation of identity in the Islamic Republic of Iran mainly in the domestic level. Accordingly, the author argues that these foundations are divided in two separate categories, however, with mutual influence. The first category contain the norms and doctrines which are originated totally from the religious-Islamic and especially Shiite sources and the second category are attitudes and understandings with the political culture of the Iranian people.

Abstract Constructivist approach is among the recent approaches in social studies and international relations and nowadays efforts are made in order to examine the major issues of international politics including foreign policies of the states by using this approach. On this basis, unlike rationalist theories such as neo-realism and neo-liberalism which are based on rational choice theory, constructivism holds that the interests of actors and states, which regulate their conduct in foreign policy, are changing and in the process of construction. Change in them hinges on the change in the norms influential in political culture and identities of these actors. On this ground, mental milieus and their transformations such as the way leaders understand the international system, the states’ identity parameters, norms of the international system and moral issues shape the continuities and changes in this area rather than increased military power (in realism) or economic strength (in liberalism) are conducive to the states’ foreign conduct in the realm of international politics. Within this framework, this article argues that certain behaviors of the Islamic Republic of Iran in foreign policy are not compatible with rationalist and materialistic notions of interests, hence it seeks to analyze the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy from the constructivist perspective.