political culture and iran`s foreign policy: a comparative study of iran`s foreign policy during ahmadinejad and rouhani

Political culture represents a society`s widely held, traditional values and its fundamental practices; foreign policy decision makers tend to make policies that are compatible with their society`s political culture because they share, if not all, many of those values. among the various factors influencing iran`s foreign policy, the role of political culture seems to be rather underestimated. this article seeks to analyze the role of iran`s political culture in shaping the country’s foreign policy, through a comparative study of the hardline foreign policy of former president mahmoud ahmadinejad and the moderate foreign policy of current president hasan rouhani. accordingly, this paper`s main question is the following: what is the role of political culture in the change in iran`s foreign policy during ahmadinejad and rouhani’s presidencies? our main hypothesis is that the oscillation of iran`s foreign policy between aggressiveness and moderation reflects iran`s two simultaneous contradictory political cultures. in this theoretical-analytical paper, we apply a descriptive-explanatory method to examine our hypothesis. first, we will have a very short discussion of the various factors shaping iran`s foreign policy. in the second section, we will shed light on the main elements of iran`s political culture, which seem to influence the country’s foreign policy. the third section of this article will compare iran’s foreign policy during president ahmadinejad and president rouhani; we will try to demonstrate how iranian leaders who are stuck in iran`s contradictory political cultures, have reacted and why. finally, the impact of iran`s political culture on its foreign policy change will be analyzed.