نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی- پژوهشی مستقل
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
This research examines the relationship between official state identity and patterns of security behavior in the Middle East, a linkage that has received limited systematic and comparative attention in regional security studies. It focuses on how Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Israel draw on their official identities to legitimize regional security actions before both domestic and international audiences. The study advances the hypothesis that the more direct and centralized a state’s intervention in constructing identity, the more ideological its security discourse becomes, resulting in reduced flexibility in its security behavior. to investigate this claim, the research adopts a combined methodological approach that integrates qualitative discourse analysis with systematic case comparison. This framework enables assessment of how threats are constructed, how security actions are legitimized and how configurations of “Self” and “Other” are represented across the official discourse of the three states. The findings reveal a significant relationship between centralized identity construction, the ideological intensity of security discourse and the flexibility of security behavior. However, this relationship does not operate uniformly or linearly across all cases. The study’s primary contribution lies in its simultaneous comparison of three distinct models of state-led identity construction within a single analytical structure. Ultimately, it argues that explaining security behavior in the Middle East requires the joint consideration of material factors and discursive identity mechanisms. In this sense, identity-based explanations do not replace material accounts but complement them, offering a more complete framework for understanding regional security patterns.
کلیدواژهها English
