Comparative Analysis of Political Legitimacy in the Thought of Mirzā-ye Nāʾīnī and David Beetham: With an Emphasis on the Complementary Role of the People and Legality

The question of political legitimacy in a religious government during the age of occultation (ghaybat) has always stood at the intersection of a historical and theoretical tension between "divine rightfulness" (derived from scriptural text and designation) and "popular acceptability" (derived from public consent and allegiance). In the context of the Constitutional Crisis, Mirzā Nāʾīnī faced the challenge of reconciling the jurisprudential tradition with political modernity. Previous comparative studies in this field have largely contented themselves with superficial and formal comparisons of concepts, while neglecting a precise analysis of the ontological and epistemological distinctions between classical jurisprudential theories and modern theories of political sociology. The central question of this research is whether, by moving beyond reductionism, it is possible to uncover the hidden layers of legitimacy in the political thought of Mirzā Nāʾīnī using the three-layered theoretical framework of David Beetham. In particular, the concepts of "allegiance" (bayʿa) and "oversight by the wise" in Shiite political jurisprudence have often been treated as merely legal or ceremonial terms; yet in Nāʾīnī's reading, these concepts perform a vital function in completing and consolidating legitimacy. What exactly is the role of this popular layer in preventing the transformation of a "guardianship-based" (wilāya) government into a "proprietary-domineering" (tamlikiyya) one, and how can the modern mechanisms of power limitation be explained without reducing divine foundations to a social contract? The present research aims to move beyond the superficiality of previous comparisons by undertaking a critical and structural analysis of Nāʾīnī’s political thought as articulated in his work Tanbīh al-Umma and David Beetham's three-layered model. The ultimate goal is to demonstrate that Nāʾīnī, with jurisprudential acumen, utilized the capacities of both "sacred law" (sharia) and "constitutional law" to create a "functional equivalence" with modern theories for the purpose of limiting power and preventing despotism, without reducing the ontological foundations of Shiite jurisprudence. A further objective is to redefine "allegiance" not as the origin of legitimacy, but as a "complementary supervisory institution" to address the question of how to guarantee efficiency and justice during the age of occultation. The research method is descriptive-analytical with a comparative-structural approach. Data have been collected through library research, with direct reference to primary sources, including the treatise Tanbīh al-Umma wa-Tanzīh al-Milla (edited by Hosseinian) and David Beetham's (1991) principal
work, The Legitimation of Power. This approach ensures that key concepts such as "guardianship," "proprietary-domineering rule," "general permission" (idhn ʿāmm), and "expressed consent" are analyzed in their original contexts without distortion through secondary translations. The findings of the research show that although Nāʾīnī's mechanisms exhibit structural overlap with Beetham's model (conformity to rules, shared beliefs, and expressed consent), they are ontologically quite distinct. In the first layer, rules in Beetham's model are positivist and worldly in nature, whereas in Nāʾīnī's thought the constitution "discloses" (kashf) the fixed divine ordinances. In the second layer, shared beliefs in Beetham's view arise from social consensus, whereas Nāʾīnī grounds them in "rational good and evil" (ḥusn wa-qubḥ ʿaqlī). The most significant finding lies in the third layer: in Beetham's model, popular consent is one of the principal pillars constituting the "origin" of legitimacy; however, in Nāʾīnī's intellectual system, popular allegiance and participation are never the "origin of creating rightfulness" but rather merely the "condition of actualization" and the "guardian" of a pre-existing divine legitimacy. In other words, without popular consent and oversight, in Nāʾīnī's view the government loses its quality of "guardianship" and degenerates into "proprietary despotism" (istibdād tamlīkī), becoming practically unworkable. Ultimately, this research demonstrates that Shīʿī political jurisprudence does not need to secularize its foundations or merely adopt Western theories in order to engage with modern political concepts. By carefully distinguishing between the "divine origin of legitimacy" and the "popular process of its consolidation," Nāʾīnī offers a model of "hybrid legitimacy." This framework explains how—without reducing religion to a mere social contract, and by elevating "allegiance" from a simple disclosive act to a "complementary supervisory institution"—one can both prevent deviation toward religious despotism and ensure stable political authority during the age of occultation. This achievement opens the way for a reformulation of the relationship between religion and democracy in contemporary Islamic societies and shows that the Shīʿī jurisprudential tradition possesses an internal capacity to reproduce modern concepts of governance without losing its theoretical authenticity.