the legitimacy crisis in the emergence of the mashrooteh movement and the islamic revolution

this article is an attempt to study two historical junctures in the history of iran: from the qajar era to the mashrooteh movement; and from the pahlavi era to the islamic revolution. the two junctures have been studied from different perspectives; however, this article concentrates only on how political legitimacy emerged and diminished in the the above-mentioned revolutions. the basic question to be addressed in this study is: what is the relationship between the emergence of the legitimacy crises and the decline of the dominating political systems in the two eras? this question leads to other questions: what resources fed the political legitimacy in the qajar and pahlavi eras? on what other factors and events is the collapse of the political legitimacy in the mashrooteh and the islamic revolution dependent? and by means of which alternative legitimizing element do the mashroote movement and the islamic revolution evolve? this article attempts to answer the above questions.