Strategic Studies Quarterly

Abstract This article tries to review the relation between democracy and national security in less-developed nations. Since there are some limits on civil and political freedoms in less-developed countries in the name of national security, and democracy has had some unpleasant impacts on national security in these kinds of nations, author tries to analyze this issue.  This article shows that democracy and civil institutions of democratic system can correct and facilitate the flow of data, match outputs and inputs in political system, and coordinate components of political system with its functional environment, and help to increase national security factors. This occurs through functions like making social cohesion, increasing political capacity, increasing the legitimacy of system, positive effects on nation building process, and adapting elites discourse with social discourse.    

Abstract The Micro Approach at studying International Relations normally focuses on structure and behavior of the actors of international system; decision making process in the field of foreign policy is a part of this structure. Considering the published works with respect to the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, this paper discusses the structure as well as process of decision making in the country. Therefore, due to three relevant variables, including, stakeholders (agents), organization and process, the survey is conducted with in the framework of legal-organizational (official) and political-sociological (unofficial) approaches. Finally, the paper concludes with highlighting deficiency of the relevant texts and a few suggestions are raised to remove them.