علیرضا کوهکن

Foreign policy is implemented in the international environment with special and various tools; one of those tools witha prominent role in diplomacy. However, along with traditional diplomacy, with the emergence of new actors after the Cold War and the entry into the age of communication and technology, diplomacy took new forms. One type of diplomacy that has received more attention in recent years is science diplomacy. So far, scientific diplomacy in the world and especially in Iran has not been fully and sufficiently studied and the interest in this issue is more related to the development in recent years. Additionally, due to its less attractive scientific aspect in the world compared to many other countries, Iran should strengthen its international scientific cooperation networks. So, this article focuses on this issue and the main question is how the Islamic Republic of Iran performed in the application of science diplomacy in the field of medical sciences with Eastern Europe between 1991 and 2018. The hypothesis of this research is: The performance of the Islamic Republic of Iran in various dimensions of science diplomacy including memorandums of understanding and agreements, collaboration desks, international meetings and visits, summer schools, international seminars and congresses, visiting professors, and joint articles towards the Eastern European region from 1991 to 2018 has been increasing. The present study is applied research with the experimental scientific method and hypothesis- deductive research strategy and the review of these activities based on the indicators of science diplomacy shows that during the years 1991 to 2018, these activities have increased significantly in most of the proposed indicators.

Frankfurt School’s critical theory, derived from the ideology of Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas et al. was put forward by Robert Cox,  Andrew Linklater , and Marc Hoffmann into the realm of international relationships. It will be discussed in the framework of the third debate of international relationships. The concepts represented in this theory are highly similar to those in the Islamic theory within international policy and foreign policy. Thus, the question here is the degree to which these concepts can be employed in order to extend the Islamic theory of international relationships. The present paper is going to determine the degree to which such concepts as freedom, knowledge, mutual understanding, hegemony structure, international clampdown, and the like, which are frequently used in the Islamic international policy literature as the foundation of critical theory related to international peace, are comparable. The first hypothesis of this research is that above-mentioned concepts have only verbal similarities and not interchangeable in the level of ontology and epistemology. In order to explain the main concepts of critical theory, this research, sued analytical, descriptive method based on major resources employment. In fact, it answers the question utilizing the major resources being used in the Islamic international relationships literature.